


Dead End in Tokyo

by jack_tariff



Category: Sirius the Jaeger
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2020-10-18 16:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 92,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jack_tariff/pseuds/jack_tariff
Summary: After accepting a position at her father's telecommunications company, Ryoko Naoe works closely with the eclectic members of the Anthropology Department at a small university in Tokyo.





	1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Monday 7 August 2017, approximately 4:00 AM, Shanghai

A silent young man stalked through Yangshan Port, his long fur-trimmed coat bright against the shadows cast by the towers of shipping containers stacked in endless rows around him. As he walked, he scuffed his worn black boots against the ground. His blue eyes were downcast, hidden partly behind messy black bangs, and the rest of his hair was tied back except for a short spray of unruly white hair over his left eye. He carried a rectangular black instrument case over one shoulder, and nothing else.

  
Yangshan Port operated twenty-four hours a day, but the young man was approaching a wharf where a large passenger ship was moored in darkness beneath an unmoving freight crane. The area was cut off from the rest of the port by a privacy fence topped with barbed wire and evenly-spaced periodically-pulsing red lights. When he came within two dozen feet of the only gate through the barrier, the young man stopped and toed a rock out of a crack in the concrete. Then, with a sharp kick, he sent it arcing through the air to clatter noisily against one of several sheet metal signs on the fence that read NO TRESPASSING.

  
The young man knelt and set his instrument case on the ground as two figures materialized before the fence, seemingly out of the shadows cast by its imposing height. They were broad shouldered men, clean shaven and dressed in suits. Both also wore sunglasses, though it was the middle of the night. Despite their apparent post as guards outside of the wharf, they did not appear to be armed. One called out to the young man harshly in Chinese, “What are you doing here? Get lost!”  
The instrument case clicked open, revealing a clean velvet lining and three long black cylinders capped with silver at each end. The young man lifted them up, rattling the narrow chains that connected each piece, as if he had not heard the order to leave. The cylinders clicked together in his hands to build a staff as long as he was tall, and when he stood back up again, the young man held it out in front of him to point over the fence.

  
“I can smell what you’ve got on that ship,” he said in a low, calm voice. The guards came closer to hear him. “The stench like rust and rotten fish. The stink of vampires… it makes me sick.”

  
With a cry of rage, the young man leapt nimbly at the foremost of the two men who really were not men at all, and swung his staff down powerfully. The man snarled like a beast and raised one arm to deflect the blow, his hand growing huge, red, and claw-like as the rest of his body flexed unnaturally against the fabric of his suit. At the same time, the other vampire who had stood guard with him recognized the nature of their opponent and cried out, “It’s a Jaeger!”

  
The Jaeger’s staff connected with the vampire’s wrist with enough force to shatter any mortal man’s entire forearm, but the guard was unfazed. As he pushed the staff aside, he brought his other hand up to catch the front of the Jaeger’s shirt in one clawed fist and dangle him above the ground. Then the guard’s body convulsed as muscle quickly outpaced bone in an effort to transform from something barely human to something completely inhuman. His sunglasses fell, revealing hungry red eyes in gleaming yellow sclera. He spoke to the Jaeger through a mangled jaw bristling with too-sharp teeth to inform him, “Would you look at that. In all my centuries, I never thought I’d get the chance to bite through the neck of a real Jaeger…”

  
The Jaeger stared down furiously into his opponent’s eyes, then he smiled as he said, “And you never will again.”

  
He twisted the staff in his hands and blades sprang from either end. The Jaeger brought the bottom of the staff up sharply and gutted the vampire that held him in one fatal stroke. When the claw at his throat released him, the Jaeger hit the ground running, not once looking back at the creature as its body disintegrated into hot, sulfurous ash.

  
The other vampire had run for the wall and already reached the gate. As the Jaeger approached with his bloodied staff held out at his side, the vampire pressed his still human-looking face to a speaker set in the wall and bellowed, “The Jaeger’s here!”

  
The heavy gate groaned as someone on the other side started to winch it open while the Jaeger closed the distance between himself and the second guard with a few effortless strides. The vampire turned, his right arm outstretched to slash at the Jaeger with five cruel talons, but the young man spun his staff so swiftly that the blades sliced neatly through the otherworldly creature’s wrist. Then as the vampire lunged forward with a scream of pain and anger, the Jaeger swung his staff up and caught it under the chin. His blade sliced through the vampire’s throat like paper and it sprayed spittle into the air with its death cry.

  
A dozen more transformed vampires poured out of the now open gate, ravening for fresh blood. The Jaeger stabbed his staff into the dying guard’s chest and used it to vault himself over the wall and over the heads of the horde, expertly rolling to his feet as soon as he landed on the other side. He ran on down the quay, ignoring the pack of vampires as they snapped at his heels. His blue eyes searched the sky, and caught something glinting in the cab at the top of the freight crane. He leapt to one side, and heard the whizz of a sniper’s bullet pass through the air where he had been before it embedded itself in the chest of one of his blood-sucking pursuers. The beast fell, and its brothers tripped over it in their eagerness. The Jaeger dispatched three more swiftly with his staff and the sniper on top of the crane took care of the rest.

  
As the last vampire crumbled to dust and embers, the Jaeger caught his breath and glared up at the crane. Abruptly, the light posts around the quay turned on, blinding him to the actions of the crane operator high over his head. Then he heard a voice crackle out of the loudspeakers installed beneath the lamps to say drearily in a language he had not heard in years, “You’ve grown up, Yuliy.” 

There was a pause before the Jaeger, Yuliy, heard the crane’s engine roar to life and the great machine’s boom began to swing out from over the ship. As he watched, the crane’s operator brought the hook down to the quay. The disembodied voice spoke from the loudspeaker again, “Come here, let me show you something.”

  
Then the hook lowered to a pallet of steel beams resting on the quay, and began to lift them slowly into the air. Yuliy swung his staff one more time to fling off the bits of vampire still dripping from it, then jumped to catch the hook’s chain in his hand and plant his feet firmly on the beams as they rose. The wind whipped wildly around him, stinging his eyes and threatening to knock him to the ground, but he clung on until the crane was still again. Its chain creaked as the operator drew the steel beams, and the Jaeger on them, higher and higher over the ship until they were just a few yards below the boom.  
Then the operator exited the cab and began to walk with impossible ease over the boom toward Yuliy. The Jaeger could see that they were deathly pale with thick white hair, and unusually styled, dark colored clothes. The wind carried away the smell, but Yuliy knew that rot would permeate their every pore. They were a vampire.

  
The vampire walked closer and Yuliy’s sharp eyes began to pick out the details of his outfit. His leather jacket dripped with silver buckles and buttons, and hung open to reveal a red, high-collared button up shirt beneath. The metal heels of his heavy black boots rang loudly against the boom, and he carried his sniper rifle as carelessly on his shoulder as Yuliy had borne his staff. When he came at last within earshot, the vampire knelt and raised his rifle, lowered his gruesomely scarred face to the scope and watched Yuliy suck in a frigid breath of dismay.

  
Yuliy knew what he would find in Shanghai. The sickening, slavish vampires guarding the wharf had just been a few out of the hundreds of their ilk he had slain. An act of unimaginable horror had set him on the path of the vampire hunter as a child, and he had grown indifferent to the risks to himself as he trained into a fearsome Jaeger. That had changed abruptly not two months earlier, in Sao Paolo, when he had received a new mission from V to track a newly active vampire Royal known in Jaeger circles as Yevgraf. Seeing the photos of Mikhail alongside Yevgraf in the briefing had been the first time Yuliy had ever entertained the possibility that his brother still lived--and even now, looking at him, Yuliy would never call his condition alive. But he existed again, somehow, on the same Earth with Yuliy during a time when the Jaeger felt more alone than ever.  
He swung silently in the wind, reliving the last fourteen years and feeling his brother’s deadened gaze on him for several moments before he called, “I thought that you didn’t use guns, Mikhail?”

  
Mikhail shifted his gun from his shoulder to answer, “So you remember our hunting lessons, Yuliy? I’m sure they must come in handy for you, these days.” He smiled sadly and posed a question of his own, “Yuliy, why did you become a Jaeger?”  
The question surprised Yuliy, as he thought the answer was quite obvious. “For vengeance!” He shouted back. “I’m going to kill every one of those bastards who took our mother, and our tribe!”

  
After a beat, Mikhail lifted the gun back to his shoulder. He switched out of their mother tongue and into Russian. “You’re no avenger, Yuliy.” He studied his younger brother steadily through the scope and continued, “An avenger’s eyes are full of anger, hate, sadness, despair, but yours…” He shook his head, then added, “Just forget about it.”

  
Shocked by what he was hearing, Yuliy wavered, and then tightened his grip on the chain. He had known hate and rage and despair every day of his life for the last sixteen years. This ruthless cocktail made him what he knew he was, a destroyer of the vampires that crept unseen through the dark places of the world. What else could he be, after what had happened all those years ago? “Forget about what, Mikhail?” He shouted across the abyss.

  
Mikhail’s mouth twisted cruelly. “Forget about me. Forget about Mother, and Dogville… and forget about the Jaegers.” He saw Yuliy’s scowl deepen. “You failed here. Master Yevgraf has already moved on. If I see you again as a Jaeger, Yuliy, I’ll kill you.”  
“You’re going to kill me!?” Yuliy objected in anguish. As if in reply, the wind picked up roughly and he nearly lost his staff.  
Mikhail shouted sharply, “I’m under orders to destroy any Jaeger that I see--but you’re my baby brother, and I think it’s only fair if I give you a head start.” His grin widened at Yuliy’s shocked expression, and he asked sarcastically, “What’s the matter, Yuliy? Did you think that after destroying every other vampire in the world, you were going to kill me?” Yuliy didn’t have an answer. He could only stare up at Mikhail, seething with equal parts frustration and confusion. Mikhail repeated, “Forget about the Jaegers, Yulichka, and live your life. Forget about everything except survival.”

  
Yuliy’s heart ached at his brother’s cruel jab. Survive had been their mother’s last word to them, and Mikhail had spat it like a curse as he turned away. Still crouched on the boom of the crane, the vampire fired his rifle into the operator cab. Sparks flew and something mechanical groaned. Then Yuliy felt as if his stomach had flipped violently up toward his eyeballs as the chain holding him up grew slack, sending the load of steel beams plummeting toward the ship below.

  
With a feat that would have been impossible for any normal human, Yuliy launched himself from the crane hook to the wharf only seconds before the beams crashed through the deck of the boat. He threw his staff away as he hit the ground, rolling for several painful yards and tearing holes in his clothes while he did his best to protect his head with his arms. When at last the world stopped spinning, he tried to sit up. In front of him, the great ship had noisily begun to sink.

  
With the lights on the wharf now on, Yuliy could see that it was old and derelict. Metal screamed as the boat’s center of gravity shifted and it rolled onto its starboard side. The ship was rapidly taking on water, and the immeasurable sound of the tonnage collapsing was sure to draw attention. There would be no point in trying to find Mikhail again--he would already be on the way to rejoining the high-ranking vampire Yevgraf. His head still reeling from both the physical and emotional toll of the night, Yuliy forced himself to read the name off the side of the ship: BYZANTIUM.

  
Then he stumbled to his feet to search for his staff. It had landed in pieces across the quay, and the young Jaeger found that while the blades still sprang into place when he triggered them, the chains between the staff’s segments had all been broken. It would require some time to repair—time that Yuliy had, now that he had lost his lead on Yevgraf and was starting his mission again at square one. He needed help to find his way again, and luckily he knew just who to ask.

* * *

Thursday 10 August 2017, 8:30 AM, Minato, Tokyo

On the thirty-first floor of the shining Shiodome City Center, the telecommunications mogul affectionately known in the business as “Baron” Genzo Naoe took advantage of a few moments’ respite in his corner office to gather his thoughts. Though it was in one of the most modern commercial towers in Tokyo, Naoe furnished his office to reflect his old fashioned values. In front of the door was a small receiving area, with two matching couches flanking a low wooden coffee table. To the left of the receiving area was his desk, built of solid wood with brass handles on the drawers. To the right of the desk was a matching bar with a tasteful set of tumblers on top. On the wall above his desk was an oil painting of his father and founder of Naoe Telecommunications Company, Gen’ichiro Naoe. Under the painting was an ornately decorated katana in a black lacquered sheath. Arranged on a shelf below that were awards and recognitions Genzo had received during his own time serving as C.E.O. The arrangement was meant to intimidate a visitor, but the Baron warmed up his desk with a framed photograph on his desk of himself, his late wife, and his daughter Ryoko at age eight.

  
Most of the times when he was feeling thoughtful, the Baron would study the photo of his family, but today he was facing the floor-to-ceiling glass window that made up one wall of his office and watching the bustle of the business district carry on below him. His sharp eyes scanned over the heads of the people to see installed surreptitiously on street lamps and on the sides of buildings immediately surrounding the City Center, seven silver boxes roughly the size of a human toddler. They were referred to internally at NTC as Signal Banks. The Baron didn’t have a very clear idea about how they worked, but he knew that these boxes were the brainchild of some genius at Alma Electronics, a tech firm that NTC had acquired four years ago, and if they performed as promised, they would take the Naoe Telecommunications Company out of Tokyo and onto the global stage.

  
Inside the Signal Banks were experimental modems and wireless routers that provided incredibly high speed internet to every home, business, and mobile device within range, powered by rechargeable batteries that could operate independent of the city grid for up to five days. They had been in development for nearly three years before NTC had revealed their great experiment to the public in late 2016: the company was going to use their magic boxes to provide free, unlimited high-speed internet to everyone in the neighborhood for six months, and then the entire city of Tokyo for a year. The Signal Banks had been switched on the first of January, 2017, and so far there had been no complaints. The Board of Directors at NTC had been hesitant to allow the Baron to perform this wild experiment, but investor interest has never been higher and the returns had so far beat out any of the risk. Why then, he wondered at the window, were they so determined to oust him by the end of the year?

  
The Baron knew why. It was the same reason his lawyers and his doctors had called him every day that week, doggedly rescheduling meeting after meeting that he was shamefully avoiding; it was the same reason his financial managers had been calling his lawyers; and the same reason his daughter Ryoko, now twenty-two, had accepted a position at the company over the summer after having angrily vowed years before to never work for her father. Two weeks earlier, he had suffered an episode of the heart that had kept him in the hospital for three days and forced him to re-evaluate his role in the company he had worked his entire life to build. The first thing the doctors had told him to do upon his release was to avoid stress, but the Baron had found that making the arrangements to reduce his work load had resulted in more stress than ever.

  
The Baron had hoped for a slow morning with his daughter after her arrival in Tokyo, but his assistant Agatha had informed him early on that there were contracts to be drafted and phone calls to be followed up on, so the breakfast with his daughter would have to be rescheduled. Unfortunately for Ryoko, she had already shown up at the front desk downstairs and hadn’t been told that breakfast had been canceled, but the Baron still had ten minutes--or eight now, following his reverie--before his car arrived to take him to the train to Nagoya. By the time he’d taken the elevator to the lobby, he had seven.

  
“Ryoko!” He exclaimed as soon as the elevator doors opened even though he hadn’t laid eyes on his daughter yet. His voice echoed across the quiet lobby, and the dozen or so professionally dressed people that were talking to each other in small groups or waiting alone on the scattered chairs started and briefly stared at him. None of them were Ryoko, so the Baron did not pay them any mind. One young woman facing the visitor’s desk, however, turned slowly toward him, and he instantly recognized the expression of resigned embarrassment on her face.

  
“Ryoko,” the Baron said, more quietly this time, with his arms outstretched and his eyes wide to take her in. He hadn’t seen much of her outside of rare video calls for the last four years, and the change, to him, was dramatic. She was dressed in a pale yellow blouse, with a dark grey knee-length skirt and matching jacket. Ryoko’s face, once round and girlish, had matured and her warm brown eyes had become more serious. Her hands, which used to swing at her sides as she skipped from place to place, were folded demurely on top of the handle of her roll-along suitcase. But her hair had surprised the Baron the most; Ryoko had worn her long brown hair in twin braids for most of her life, but now it had been secured into a severe bun at the back of her head. Not a strand looked out of place as she hugged him. While she had dressed well her entire life, Ryoko really looked the part of a businesswoman now. The Baron suddenly felt at a loss about how to speak with her not just as his daughter, but as an adult. He managed a stuttering, “It’s good to see you,” and then paused.

  
Luckily or unluckily for the Baron, Agatha swept in and carried the encounter away from both of them with a fistful of PDAs beeping in one hand and heavy manila folders in the crook of her other arm. She was a coldly beautiful woman who wore sunglasses at every hour of the day and religiously avoided the sun. She had also been hired by the Board to whip the Baron back into shape after his organizational skills had faltered in the last few years, and it was a job she took very, very seriously. No exceptions would be made to the Baron’s obligations, nor to Ryoko’s it seemed as Agatha thrust a brand new, black cellphone into the younger woman’s hands.

  
“This is your contract of employment with NTC, and the lease for your new apartment,” Agatha said quickly, dropping her load of folders into Ryoko’s arms. “And the terms of the grant are in this folder here. And this one, this one is the profile of the grant recipients, which you’re going to need to verify for us by next Friday.”

  
Ryoko gaped silently at Agatha for several seconds, then asked, “Uh, Dad?”

  
The Baron was already retreating with Agatha’s hand on his arm, a bodyguard opening the door for him, and another assistant trailing him out of the lobby and toward the street-level exits. He didn’t even have thirty seconds with his daughter to at least explain what was going on. It reminded him too much of the last time they had seen each other in Tokyo, the day his daughter had departed for Osaka. He had promised the night before to see her to the train platform, but in the morning he hadn’t even gotten out of the car to tell her good-bye. Finally finding his voice, the Baron shouted through the doors to Ryoko, “I’ll call you! We’ll have dinner tonight!”

  
She stared after him and hadn’t moved by the time he was finally out of sight.

* * *

Thursday 10 August 2017, 8:40 AM

Ryoko’s bleary, sleep-deprived brain had barely been able to process the changes in her father’s appearance in the few moments she’d had to look at him before that Agatha woman had taken the Baron away. There were white hairs in his mustache and hair that she didn’t remember seeing the last time he’d called her, and bags under his eyes from lack of sleep. To Ryoko, it looked like he hadn’t been following the doctor’s orders for bed rest and regular meals, and the cold stab of fear for her father’s health woke her up more fully than the trudge from the train.

  
Ryoko straightened her back and gathered her wits, her suitcase, and her armful of folders before following briskly after her father and his small entourage. She wasn’t going to let him get away that easily! She had come back to Tokyo not just to do a job. She had also come there with personal goals. After four years at Kansai, she had the negotiation skills and the business insight to finally speak to her father in a language he could understand. By the time she had exited the lobby, however, there was no sign of him, and the black cellphone Agatha had given her began to ring. It vibrated so violently that it fell right out from where Ryoko had tucked it among the folders and landed screen-down on the sidewalk.

  
Several strangers walking by flinched sympathetically as Ryoko groaned and knelt to pick up the phone. Then her suitcase tipped forward without a hand to hold it steady and clattered noisily to the ground beside her. Ryoko held her breath as she flipped the phone over, but was as she feared; without a case or screen protector, the shiny new phone probably worth more than her monthly rent now had a huge, curved crack down the middle. It was also still ringing, and she cautiously slid her finger across the front to answer.

  
“Hello, this is Ryoko Naoe,” she said in her calmest phone voice.

  
“Good morning, Miss Naoe,” answered a man on the other end. His tone was cool. “This is your driver. I’m outside the Shiodome City Center now, are you ready to leave?”

  
Ryoko looked around, frazzled even further now by the added responsibility of having a driver, and going somewhere else, when she’d only just arrived at the place she’d been doing her damnedest to avoid. “Hang on. I’m outside too. I don’t see you.” She was staring at the line of identical black cars parked parallel on the sidewalk when she realized she was still crouched on the ground. Quickly, she stood up, nearly losing her balance and making eye contact with the driver in the car directly beside her. He had an unremarkable face, but his straight black hair was long enough to be worn in a ponytail, and it seemed to her like he was hiding a smile.

  
When he had overcome his amusement, the man rolled down the window and observed, “There you are, Miss Naoe. Would you like help with your bag?”

  
Flushed with surprise and embarrassment, Ryoko replied into the phone, “Uh, yes, thank you.” She heard her voice echo out of the speakers inside the car until the driver reached over the console and hung up the call. Then he got out of the car, and Ryoko could see that he was tall and wore a well-tailored black suit.

  
Before opening the rear passenger door for Ryoko, the driver introduced himself as Jiro Akimoto. Then as she tumbled into the back seat of the black sedan, he placed her small suitcase into the trunk. Ryoko took a moment to study the interior of the car; it was all black leather with chrome detailing on the center console, which was aglow with all kinds of buttons and dials. There was also a partition between the front and back seats that Ryoko guessed she could close if she could ever figure out the switch.

  
When he returned to his seat, Ryoko saw Akimoto glance at her from the rear view mirror. As they pulled away from the curb and merged into the flow of traffic, he asked, “Is the rest of your luggage arriving later, Miss Naoe?” 

Seated in the car, Ryoko could finally feel the tension and weariness of her body. She barely registered Akimoto’s words as a question, and answered with a start when she realized that nearly a minute had passed in complete silence. “Uh, yes,” she began. “It was just… It was such a last minute offer that I didn’t have time to pack up my old apartment…”

  
At the word apartment, Ryoko carefully drew out one of the folders from the stack she had dumped unceremoniously onto the seat beside her. It had ‘LEASE’ written at the top in neat calligraphy. Flipping it open, Ryoko scanned the contract within, identifying fairly standard lease agreements that had already been signed with her name--but not in her hand.

  
She didn’t let it bother her too much, after all, wouldn’t it be expected for the company to take liberties with her signature when they were making these kinds of arrangements? Really, they had done her the favor of finding her an apartment on such short notice. Then Ryoko found the address and swallowed a hard lump of disappointment. NTC was leasing an apartment for her in Machida, near to the site where she’d be working. Some small part of her had been hoping, however, that she could have stayed closer to her family home in Setagaya, nearly an hour away.

  
She was blinking back sudden tears when Akimoto asked her another question that she didn’t hear. He repeated it patiently, “Where are we headed first, Miss?”

  
Wearily, Ryoko decided that the only answer to that question had to be work. The mind-numbing minutiae of money management had been her steadfast ship through troubled waters before, and it would give her something to do instead of ruminating on her current situation. She told Akimoto, “Tajiri University, please.” She put aside the folder of leasing documents, then drew out the folder beneath it. “I’ve got the address in here somewhere…”

  
Akimoto chuckled and Ryoko heard him tap one finger on the center console. On the screen beside the driver’s wheel was a map with a westward route already highlighted. “So do I, Miss Naoe,” he explained. “Thanks to technology developed by your father’s company, this car is connected directly to your cellphone. I can sync with your appointments, your addresses, and even call your voicemail.” He watched her reaction from the rear view mirror, that hidden smile of amusement returning to his face.

  
“That’s pretty convenient,” Ryoko muttered, still staring at the folder in her lap. “How long until we get there?”

  
With a rehearsed sigh, Akimoto shook his head and told her, “During rush hour? Easily an hour, perhaps two.”

  
Ryoko heaved a sigh of her own, dismayed at the prospect of sitting in traffic for two hours. She decided she would not let the time go to waste, though, flipping open the folder again. Inside were stapled packets of paper still warm from the copy machine. At the top of the very first page were the words NTC PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE: REI SAITO ENDOWMENT FUND, 2017-2018.

  
The Public Works Committee had been her father’s favorite company division. It was devoted to hosting lavish fundraisers and dispensing generous grants, but it had started under the company’s founder, her grandfather, just after World War II as a program to help rebuild areas that had been firebombed as well as establish Naoe as the leading communications company in Tokyo. Now the money NTC granted went to more than just infrastructure--the Rei Saito Fund had just been established as an award to academic institutions with proven contributions to the humanities.

  
Ryoko felt both vastly underqualified and dutifully obligated to steward the Saito Fund in its inaugural year since it had been named after her mother and the wife of NTC’s CEO. Perhaps it was unprofessional, but as she flipped to the printed profiles of the Fund recipients she tried to think of what her mother might have had to say about them. Rei Saito had been a lifelong student of history and the award had gone to the Anthropology Department at a small, private college called Tajini University, in Machida. Ryoko had almost no background in Anthropology, and never even heard of Tajini, but she took pride in her excellent judge of character and was confident that she would find them worthy recipients of the Fund. She could probably just look them up on the University’s website before she met them, and rehearse her questions on the way…

* * *

  
Thursday 10 August 2017 10:58 AM

“We’re here, Miss Naoe,” Akimoto said, and cleared his throat. With a start, Ryoko realized she had been sleeping. Had she been snoring? How long had they been parked in front of the school like this? Ryoko’s face was hot when she quickly brushed it with one hand, checking the corners of her mouth for drool. Then she began gathering the folders, which had shifted around in the back seat while they traveled, and Akimoto got out of the car to hold open the passenger side door.

  
Ryoko stumbled out of the car as ungracefully as she had gotten into it. “Thanks for the ride, Mr. Akimoto,” she blurted out, unsure of what else to say. “I’ll take my suitcase…”

  
Akimoto raised a hand to stop her and said, “If you’ll allow me, Miss Naoe, I’ll deliver it to your apartment.” He bent toward her again with the same slight, polite bow he had presented to her earlier. “Whenever you’re ready to leave, just call me.”  
Ryoko nodded, put off by something in his deferential but indifferent attitude. “Thank you,” she repeated, then turned to take in Tajini University.

  
In front of her was a western-style red brick building three storeys tall. The gabled rooftops had dark blue shingles, and the windows were framed in white. The front porch was lined by imposing columns that supported a triangular pediment, and she could see a handful of students standing and talking together in the shade. It was well maintained, as were two similar but smaller buildings to either side, attached to the first by covered walkways. She had learned from a quick scan of their website for prospective students that the oldest buildings on the grounds of Tajini University had served as administrative buildings for the occupying forces after the war, and the modern additions had come when the land had been sold for the purposes of building the school. Even after a new library, a science lab, a cafeteria, and an athletic field had been built over the years, there was still a buffer of parkland between the school and the rest of the city on three sides. There had been no notable alumni listed anywhere, and student opinions published online about the professors and curriculum had neither intrigued or alarmed her. There had been little fanfare on the University’s own website when the Fund had been awarded, almost as if the school would not admit to having an Anthropology department at all.

  
When Ryoko checked herself into the front office to secure a temporary ID and get directions to the department, she could see why. She had to hike east, across the campus to an old Annex that had been cut off from the rest of the school by the recent installation of an ornamental pond. It was far enough that the department members lived as well as worked there, rather than the residence halls across campus. As Ryoko walked the circular path around the pond she could study the two-storey building, which was built of the same red brick but not as well maintained as the others. Ivy grew up the north west side, which was shaded by trees, and the grass around it was overgrown. It had a raised porch and double glass doors on the front, but she could also see another door on the north side of the building, half-hidden in the ivy. No students entered or exited as Ryoko climbed up the steps, and as she entered the stuffy front hall she wondered if she hadn’t been sent to the Annex as a joke.

  
It was obvious after she had entered that the Annex had once been a large home for some high ranking official, but it had since fallen into disrepair. The two-storey entryway was floored in black and white tile, and lit from above by a yellowing electric chandelier. A wide staircase of uneven steps rose halfway from the center of the room to another landing, then two separate staircases lead up to different sides of the second floor. On either side of the front room were closed doors, and to the right of the stairs, a hallway extended further into the house. The wood on the stair railing was splitting, and she could see water damage on the aging eggshell wallpaper. The windows on the front of the Annex were caked in dust and looked like they had not been opened in years. Ryoko listened for what had to be several minutes for any signs of life at all, and almost left the building when she finally heard footsteps on the second floor. Ascending the stairs hopefully, she called out, “Hello?” and then paused on the landing to wait for a response.

  
There was an answering door slam to her left followed by more footsteps. An obviously Western young man with thick blond hair appeared at the top of one of the stairs. He was dressed in slacks, a shirt, and even a tie, but his demeanor was anything but professional. To Ryoko he didn’t look much older than a first year college student. His icy blue eyes scrutinized her for a moment before he demanded, “What’s with the yelling? Are you looking for the Professor? He’s not here.”

  
Ryoko straightened her back and hugged her folders closer to her chest, surprised by the young man’s rudeness but unwilling to let it get the better of her. “Please excuse the intrusion,” she said quickly, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Is this the Anthropology department?”

  
The young man crossed his arms and stared at her. “Yes,” he said in slow, deliberate Japanese. “But like I said, if you’re looking for the Professor, he isn’t here. Come back later.”

  
Ryoko persisted as polite as before, telling him, “If the Professor isn’t here, I can also speak to, ah…” She glanced down at the paperwork she had skimmed in the car ride over before falling asleep. “Miss Almanzar. Is she here?”

  
The young man’s frown deepened. Then he looked over Ryoko’s head to call into the other half of the house, “Dorothea! There’s a visitor here for you!”

  
A moment passed before the sound of still more footsteps emerged from the hall behind Ryoko, and she turned to take in still another new face. Dorothea Almanzar was tall and beautiful, with dark skin and thick black hair. Her wine-colored blouse brought out the green of her eyes. Dorothea descended the steps toward her and welcomed her warmly by saying, “Hello. You must be Miss Naoe."

“Naoe?” Repeated the young man. “You don’t mean, Naoe Telecom..?”

  
Dorothea smiled serenely up at him as if she had only just noticed him standing there. “Philip.” She said. “Won’t you introduce yourself? This is Ryoko Naoe. She’s going to be the steward of the Rei Saito Fund that the Professor was awarded.” Her brows furrowed only slightly, but it seemed to Ryoko that Philip got the message.

  
He swallowed hard and nodded his head once in Ryoko’s direction. “Philip Lewenhart,” he said shortly. “Would you excuse me?” Then he marched stiffly back the way he had come, leaving the two women in silence.

  
It only lasted for a moment before Dorothea smiled down at Ryoko; beside her on the landing, the older woman was still a head taller. “Please forgive him, he’s wary of strangers.” Without explaining further, Dorothea started down the rest of the steps. “Would you allow me to show you around, Miss Naoe? Or do you just want to start your work?”

  
Still uncertain and determined not to show it, Ryoko gave Dorothea the most professional answer she could muster. “I would just like to see the workspace, please.” She tried to smile back warmly, yet professionally, and feared that she was just making herself look foolish.

  
To Ryoko’s great surprise, Dorothea said, “Just the short tour then. I insist.” Then she put a finger to her own pink lips to put an end to any protest. “Right this way.”

  
She lead Ryoko down the hall she had seen behind the stairway on the ground floor. It led to a large room that had a kitchen on the north side and an oval-shaped table on the south. The door Rei had seen on the north side of the house was in the kitchen. The table was covered in clutter like old mail and magazines, and past it was a door with an opaque window to another room. “That’s the Professor’s office,” Dorothea explained. “But he’s not in right now. This way…”

  
Dorothea circled around the table to the kitchen door. She opened it wide and traipsed around the corner to show Ryoko the small plots of flowers that had recently been planted behind the building. Dirt-caked shovels still leaned against the wall beside the door.

  
“We thought it could use a little cheering up out here,” Dorothea said. “What do you think?”

  
Ryoko did not really have an eye for growing things. She couldn’t even keep the ball of algae on her desk at home alive. “I think it looks nice,” she answered honestly. “But isn’t there a lot of shade back here?”

  
Dorothea smiled again and said coyly, “I think you’d be surprised to learn what can thrive in the dark.”

  
Ryoko could not fathom what on Earth she meant by that. Her bemusement showed, causing Dorothea to laugh and lay a hand lightly on the other woman’s arm.

  
“I’m sorry, Miss. I guess we have a strange sense of humor out here in the Annex. Let’s go back inside and I’ll show you where you’ll be working.”

  
Following Dorothea obediently toward the front of the Annex, Ryoko tried to let her cryptic statement roll off of her back, like Philip’s earlier rudeness. She was going to have to work closely with these people for much of the foreseeable future, and it was the most professional choice to make. When they reached the front door, Dorothea looked over Ryoko’s head toward pond and the other buildings of the campus.

  
“Have you seen much of the University yet?” She asked suddenly. “I know that you said you wanted to get to work, Miss, but this may be your only chance to take a look around before you’re settled in.” Her bright green eyes, now gravely serious, bore down on Ryoko from the top of the stairs.

  
Ryoko stared up at Dorothea, realizing that she was now on the receiving end of the same intimidating look that had sent Philip running. Instead of frightened, she was more puzzled an anything else by the woman’s odd behavior. For whatever reason, Dorothea really did not want Ryoko starting her job. But why? Did they have something to hide inside the Annex?  
She entertained the suspicion for only a second, then forced herself to stop before she got carried away. When she laid out the clues again--Philip’s rudeness, the Professor’s absence, and Dorothea’s insistence on showing her the grounds--Ryoko reasoned that they simply hadn’t expected her, and wanted to clean up the place before they let the lady with the money start poking around inside. It made complete sense, and of course she had to help them save face if she wanted this job to work out. Not just for herself, after all. The Anthropology department had a large amount of her father’s money on the line.  
“I would love to see the University,” she agreed at last, meeting Dorothea’s eyes intently.

  
Dorothea turned away from the Annex, and it seemed that the warm hospitality had returned to her face. She passed Ryoko as she descended the stairs to the path and said, “I get so restless working in that stuffy old house all day, so I could really use the walk.” She looked pointedly over her shoulder and waited for Ryoko to fall into step behind her. “I’m so glad that you understand.”

* * *

  
Thursday 10 August 2017 12:45 PM

Professor Raimond Willard sat at the wheel of a black town car, condemned to the circle of Hell that was the passenger pick-up line outside of the Harumi Terminal at the Port of Tokyo. He was a stern-looking Westerner with a long face and silver hair shorn close at the sides and windswept on top. Even in August, he dressed conservatively in a white high-collared shirt and close-fitting vest with matching jacket, but he also had the air conditioner in the town car turned up to 11. His amber-colored eyes had become unfocused behind his half-rimmed spectacles as he stared absently out of the window at people as they walked by.

  
Two fingers rapped against the passenger side window. As the Professor turned his head, the door opened and a familiar young man climbed into the car. Like the Professor, he dressed too warmly for the Tokyo summer in a light-colored coat that had seen much better days. He carried with him a backpack and an instrument case that had also been seriously scuffed up at some point on his journey. As he sat down, the Professor could see the bags beneath his eyes that said more than the young man ever would about the rough two nights he had spent on a passenger boat from Shanghai.

  
Cautiously, the Professor only said, “It’s good to see you, Yuliy.” He began to drive away from the Port and out of the busy harbor.

  
“It’s good to see you too, Professor,” Yuliy replied as he hugged his jacket closed and sneezed. The last five years seemed to squat silently between them in that car until he added, “It’s cold in here.”

  
“Sorry,” said the Professor, reaching over to turn a dial on the dashboard. “Are you hungry?”

  
“Starving,” the younger man answered. “I didn’t eat much.”

  
The Professor suggested a Greek restaurant he knew of nearby, and Yuliy agreed. It surprised Willard somewhat, since Yuliy had been reluctant to try new foods for most of the time he had known him. Judging by his demeanor as they drove, parked, and were seated in the restaurant, it did appear to the Professor that Yuliy was ready to eat anything that was put in front of him. When a server came with a complimentary bread basket, Yuliy at least had the wherewithal to wait until their back was turned before he stuffed a dry white roll into his mouth.

  
Professor Willard patiently poured olive oil and rosemary onto a small dish before he began to tear a pita into small pieces. Without eating any of it, he said, “I’ve been keeping up with your reports to V.”

  
Yuliy had suspected as much.

  
The Professor continued, “They’ve been keeping you quite busy. You must be one of the most prolific Jaegers in our ranks in a very long time.”

  
Yuliy picked up another roll and turned it over thoughtfully in his hands. “So far, I’ve been able to accomplish what I set out to do,” he said. “I’m destroying those monsters who took everything from me. But now I’ve hit a dead end, and I need your help.”

  
Willard was glad that Yuliy had come out and stated his purpose. At least that much about the boy had not changed. “You need my help because of Yevgraf."

  
Yuliy nodded solemnly.

  
With the pita thoroughly ripped to bits and soaking into mush on the plate of olive oil, the Professor forced himself to fold his idle hands before him on the table. “The Organization is not what it once was,” he began to explain, somewhat theatrically, as Yuliy continued to eat. “Our enemies have also changed with the times. The team hasn’t seen much direct action in the last few years, at least not in Japan. Fallon is away in America, actually, investigating an incident with another team of Jaegers. Our role here has been relegated to one of support. A lot has changed since you left, Yuliy.” He studied the young vampire hunter across the table over the rims of his of his glasses. “But we’ll do what we can. When we return to my office we’ll inform in the team and get organized, but for now, I think I should fill you in on what else has gone on in your absence.”

  
Yuliy nodded. The first bullet on the Professor’s docket was Philip.

  
“Mr. Lewenhart is a talented young man, proficient in personal firearms, and has been our team’s lead intelligence gatherer since Fallon left. He’s been with us at Tajini University for two years and has proved himself invaluable as a Jaeger, however…”  
He was interrupted by the arrival of their food. As with the bread, Yuliy immediately tucked into his plate of grilled chicken and vegetables. Willard continued quickly, “However, I believe that he may be resistant to your re-introduction to the team.”  
Yuliy asked around a mouthful, “Why is that?”

  
Willard sighed. There was no mincing words on the reason. “His parents were killed by a Sirius tribesman.”

  
Finally, something had forced Yuliy to stop eating and catch his breath. During all the time he had spent believing himself alone, and then chasing his brother’s shade, he had barely given other survivors of his tribe any consideration.

  
Yuliy picked up one of the glasses of water that been left in front of each of them and drained it. Then, after he dropped the glass heavily back to the table he looked at the Professor and asked, “When did that happen?”

  
“It was over ten years ago, when he was very young,” Willard said. “I do not know much about it, but Jaegers were involved in the incident. There could be a report written up on it somewhere, if you want me to find it.”

  
The ice cold water felt like it had frozen around Yuliy’s heart. He did not immediately reply. Then he asked another question, “Does he know?”

  
Did Philip know that Yuliy belonged to the same tribe as the one who had orphaned him? Yuliy doubted that he had known the culprit personally. In the years before he had been born, Sirius who had come of age once went to seek opportunities outside of their isolated village. Fewer and fewer young people came back each year, however, and the last Sirius who had left to never return had been his father, Aleksei.

  
“Yes. I believed it would be wrong not to disclose that information.” Willard leaned back in his seat, his entree still untouched in front of him. The two men considered each other carefully, with something unsaid hanging in the air between them. Then Yuliy looked down at his plate and arduously picked up another piece of chicken with his fork. It no longer looked appetizing, and what he’d already eaten had congealed like glue in his stomach.

  
“Has he made it a mission to exterminate every other Sirius to pay for the deaths of his parents?” He asked coldly. The encounter with Mikhail had raised so many questions for Yuliy, and stirred up no small amount of anger. Anger at himself, for failing to secure his brother; anger at Mikhail, for what had happened to him; and as always, the smoldering rage that slept dormant in the pit of Yuliy’s stomach that was his motivation to kill the monsters that started it all. He could not imagine any other way to live, so wouldn’t Philip be the same? If he saw Philip, would he find the eyes of an avenger, like his brother had described?

  
The Professor’s brows came together sternly, and he lowered his voice. “I don’t think it’s fair to equate the genocide of a village with a random act of violence.” He finally picked up his utensils and began to eat, signaling to Yuliy that he had had his fill of conversation. Yuliy also continued to eat, somewhat mechanically, less confident that he could see the difference.

* * *

Thursday 10 August 2017 3:14 PM

At some point during their tour of the campus, Ryoko’s stomach had rumbled loudly. She had been mortified, but Dorothea had swept her amicably off to the cafeteria. It had taken Ryoko ages to eat her lunch because Dorothea kept peppering her with questions about Osaka. As they talked, Ryoko became aware of how pleased she was by Dorothea’s attention--and how embittered she was still feeling about being blown off by her father that morning. The realization really took the wind from her sails, and they finished the walk back to the Annex in silence.

  
As they approached the building, Dorothea joked that she had at last run out of excuses to keep Ryoko from her work. She asked where Ryoko would like to begin, and the younger woman replied, “I’ll have to start with auditing your expenses from the last few years, making sure there hasn’t been any suspicious activity or fraud. It’s just a formality.”

  
After they entered the Annex, Dorothea lead Ryoko to the door on the left side of the room and fished a set of old keys from her pocket. As she unlocked the door Dorothea explained sheepishly, “The thing is, Miss, Fallon is usually our logistics man. I’ve tried to keep it all organized since he’s been away, but I’m kept pretty busy with the work I do for the Professor, and as you can see...”

  
The door swung in with a shriek, revealing a dark sitting room that had been converted into an office. There was a window on the right side obscured by dull red curtains, and a bricked-up fireplace on the wall opposite the door. In front of the fireplace was a heavy wooden desk, and stooped metal filing cabinets lined the walls to either side of it. Two more desks were pressed into the corner to the right, and a dusty aged armchair sat with a floor lamp to the left. There was an ornate woven rug on the bare wood floor that had once been colorful, but had become muddled by years of tramped-in dirt. Dorothea flipped a switch on the wall, turning on a light in the dust-caked ceiling fan, and pointed to a second door to their right.

  
“There’s a bathroom through there, and you can also get into the kitchen,” she said. “There’s also the door to the basement, but it’s almost always locked. Nothing but storage down there… Miss Naoe?” 

Dorothea frowned at Ryoko, who stood frozen in the doorway. She had been taken aback by the sight of innumerable cardboard boxes piled on every available surface--all three desks, the cabinets, even the chair and some stacks on the floor--like the ruins of a lost civilization. Their sides were scribbled with dates, some crossed out and re-written several times. Adding to the archaeological aspect of the room were the odd artifacts, like animal-shaped statues scattered among the boxes and geometric textiles nailed to the white walls. This small disaster had been Fallon’s office--and now, for the time being, it would be hers.

  
Ryoko took it all in for several seconds, then snapped to and faced Dorothea. The other woman grimaced sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Miss Naoe. You were probably hoping for a computer, weren’t you?”

  
A computer was only the start. Ryoko set her face and nodded once, determined to swallow her feelings until she could properly establish her next step. “It’s okay. I have a laptop…” She turned to pull it out of her suitcase, then remembered Akimoto had delivered it to her apartment. Sighing, Ryoko chalked her first day back in Tokyo as a loss and said, “But I think I should just come back tomorrow and start fresh.” She smiled hopefully at Dorothea, too tired to fake pristine professionalism anymore.

  
Dorothea smiled right back, her brows furrowed sympathetically. “We’re probably going to be packing it in here soon, too. Thanks for taking lunch with me, Miss Naoe--I hope we can do it again sometime.”

  
She was a hard woman to read, but Ryoko decided to take Dorothea’s words at face value. Ryoko pulled out her phone as they left the office, and Dorothea caught a glimpse of the broken screen. “Oh, that’s a bad one,” she said with a grimace.  
“I know,” Ryoko replied, delicately opening her contacts to call Akimoto. “And this phone is brand new!”

  
Dorothea shook her head sadly for Ryoko. Then the front door to the Annex opened and two men entered--one appeared to be around Ryoko’s age, carrying some luggage, and the other was obviously older. Both paused at the sight of the women, who were equally surprised to see them. Dorothea recovered first and stepped forward to make introductions.

  
“Professor, welcome back,” she said pleasantly. “Excellent timing, as always. This is Miss Naoe, with the Saito Fund. She was just on her way out.”

  
Ryoko straightened and abruptly hung up on Akimoto, who had just answered the call. The Professor was a longtime friend of her father’s and she wanted to make an excellent first impression, though she knew little about him besides what she had read in the file from Agatha.

  
“Good afternoon, Miss Naoe,” he said, accepting Ryoko’s firm handshake. “It is a pleasure to meet you at last. I apologize for not being here earlier, but as I’m sure Dorothea has told you, my work keeps me quite busy. Regardless, I hope that you make yourself at home here in the Annex.”

  
Ryoko accepted his apology with a demure, “Thank you, Professor, it’s not a problem.” She could see a distant expression in his eyes that she had seen many times in her father’s, and realized that she didn’t even have a chance to make an impression on him before he had moved on in his mind to the next matter at hand.

  
The Professor started to walk toward the back room where his office waited, taking off his jacket as he went. “I’m sorry to ask this of you, Dorothea, but I’ll need you and Philip to meet me in my office. We have some late work to do tonight.”

  
Dorothea frowned at the Professor’s retreating back and for a moment, Ryoko thought she was about to witness mutiny within the Anthropology department. Then Dorothea turned back to her and the other newcomer with a shrug and a good-natured smile on her face. “Thanks a lot, Yuliy,” she said dryly, reaching out to put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you. Have you gotten taller?”

  
Yuliy’s expression was grave as he answered, “That’s possible.” Dorothea laughed, and he turned his attention to Ryoko. Where the Professor’s gaze had been distant when he’d looked at her, Yuliy’s dark blue eyes were very intent as they studied her face. She stared right back at him, wondering silently if the streak of white in his hair hair was natural or just an odd affectation, until her phone began vibrating furiously in her hand. She jumped, then flushed red at her own awkwardness. Akimoto was calling her back.

  
Quickly, Ryoko said, “Please, excuse me. It was very nice to meet you.” She answered her phone as she dashed out the door and hurried toward the front of the University, where her ride would already be waiting.

  
Yuliy had watched with mild interest as she left. “Who was that?” He asked Dorothea once the doors had closed behind her.  
Dorothea looked surprised. “Didn’t you hear me? That’s Miss Ryoko Naoe, from the Naoe Telecommunications Company.”  
Yuliy shook his head. “Sorry. My Japanese is rusty, it was hard to follow what you were saying. Why is she here?”

  
Now Dorothea was getting annoyed. “The Professor really didn’t tell you? The department won some grant from her father’s company, and now she has to audit us before we can get the cash. Poor kid, I wonder how badly she must have done in school to wind up here, reading Fallon’s handwritten budgets in a dusty old Annex with us.”

  
Yuliy did not get that Dorothea was joking. He asked seriously, “Is she going to be a problem?”

  
Dorothea sighed. “You really haven’t changed at all,” she told Yuliy. “Of course she won’t be a problem. Just let me worry about it.” She grew more serious herself. “What did the Professor fill you in on?”

  
“He told me about Philip,” Yuliy said flatly, then tilted his head back to look up toward the second floor landing. Philip was standing there, studying the other two with his arms folded across his chest.

  
“Philip,” Dorothea finally said, breaking the silence. “This is…”

  
“I know who you are,” Philip interrupted her. “Yuliy Jirov."

  
Yuliy only nodded. That was that.

  
They watched as Philip started down the stairs toward them. When he got to the ground floor, he snapped, “I didn’t realize Jaegers were such huge gossips. Don’t we have a meeting with the Professor?”

  
He stomped away from them down the hall. After he had passed, Dorothea and Yuliy only looked at each other and shrugged. However he had expected their first meeting to go, Yuliy would have considered that one of the better outcomes, since they had not tried to kill each other on sight. It had been hard to tell if Philip had the eyes of an avenger--he had hurried by so quickly that Yuliy had not taken a good look. 

Not much later, they had all gathered in Willard’s austere office. He sat at a wooden desk, organized neatly and illuminated by a brass lamp. Behind him was a low chest flanked by two bookshelves, and a window he kept shuttered tightly. Shelves along the walls bore his awards and a collection of artifacts collected over two very different careers. In front of his desk, seated on an antique green sofa, were Dorothea and Philip. Yuliy stood beside a mustard yellow armchair and cast odd shadows with the light from a table lamp on its other side. Behind Yuliy was an unlit fireplace where wind whistling softly through invisible gaps in the brick chimney was the only sound before the Professor finally cleared his throat.

  
“Thank you all for being here,” he began slowly. “We’ve all been busy with individual projects, so it’s been some time since we’ve gathered like this. I only wish it could have been under happier circumstances.”

  
Impatiently, Philip leaned forward and said, “Jeez, are you reading a will or briefing a mission? I have homework.” Dorothea dug her elbow into Philip’s side but he only grunted and slid further down the couch.

  
The Professor was unbothered. “You’re about to have more. Yuliy has returned to us with some rather troubling intelligence gathered while working in the field, and I’ve also received orders from V to treat this investigation as our top priority.”

  
The air in the room changed at the mention of the enigmatic V. Everyone sat a little straighter and watched Willard’s face as he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a folder filled with both yellowed pages of handwritten notes and crisp white printed paper. The entire bundle was tied closed with coarse string.

  
“Yuliy has been tasked with tracking and eliminating a high-ranking Royal Vampire named Yevgraf,” the Professor continued with one hand on top of the folder. “According to V’s files, Yevgraf is at least several hundred years old, and appears to have resumed activity after several decades of dormancy. He also has an impressive entourage of a few younger Royals and human thralls; he is a formidable enemy, and not one that any Jaeger should try to take on alone.”

  
The Professor paused pointedly, but no one rose to the bait so he carried on. “He was last sighted in Shanghai less than a week ago, but we know he has since left and we don’t have any leads on where he is going next.”

  
“You were tracking a dangerous Royal Vampire and you lost him?” Philip asked incredulously, turning toward Yuliy. “I guess there’s not much hound dog in you.”

  
Yuliy met Philip’s critical gaze from across the room. What he had been unable to determine earlier was clear to him now as he looked steadily into the other young man’s pale blue eyes. No avenger would resort to schoolyard taunts in order to get a rise out of a sworn enemy, so while he and Philip probably would never be friends, Yuliy decided that he had nothing to fear.

  
“I found a group of Vampires guarding a ship there, but it sank,” he explained to everyone. “Whatever they had been moving out of Shanghai, it was already gone or had never been there at all.” As he spoke, Willard used a letter opener from his desk to cut the string around the folder and pulled out three stapled copies of a report from the night in question. He handed two to Yuliy, who handed one to Dorothea and Philip to share.

  
The duo briefly skimmed the documents. Then Dorothea asked belatedly, “Wait, you sank a whole ship? Was there anything on it?”

  
“It was empty, just collateral damage from the fight,” Yuliy replied, and did not elaborate further. He glanced through the report to see that V had added photographs from a short Shanghai newspaper article that had been the only public acknowledgement of the so-called ‘industrial accident’. The other Jaegers could see, just as he had, that the Byzantium had not been difficult to destroy.

  
Philip whistled appreciatively as he read over Yuliy’s report in more detail. “Fourteen vampires? Wow. Field agents really do get to have all the fun.” He sank back against the couch with a frustrated huff.

  
Dorothea frowned at him, but turned away and said to Yuliy, “Sounds like you need fresh eyes on this to help you find a clue.”  
Yuliy nodded, then looked toward the Professor.

  
“I already have a tentative strategy,” Willard said. “The first phase will rely on Philip--I’m afraid that your homework is going to have to wait.”

  
Philip rocketed forward again, outraged. “Are you kidding me? It’s like you guys want me to flunk! What do I have to do?”  
Unperturbed, the Professor told him, “I need you to find out everything that you can about that ship. It may not look like much now, but something that big doesn’t change hands lightly. I think there could be promising leads buried in its past.”

Philip grumbled under his breath but did not object. Then the Professor stood and held the rest of the folders out to Dorothea, who got up gracefully to accept it. “Dorothea, I’m asking you to start in a different direction. Please cross reference that file with the others we have collected to find any connections between Yevgraf or his associates with other known targets. If he has any friends around here, we’ll find them.”

  
Then the Professor straightened his clothes and concluded, “In the meantime I’ll be following up on an old contact. It might not turn up anything, but at this point in the investigation all of our options are worth pursuing.”

  
When no more instructions seemed forthcoming, Yuliy frowned. “Professor,” he said. “What am I supposed to do?”

Willard seemed surprised by the question, and answered, “Well, Yuliy, right now I just want you to get some rest over the next couple of days. I think you’ve more than earned it.”

  
Yuliy was inclined to disagree, and the Professor saw it on his face. “Alright,” the older man amended. “Why don’t you just help the others until we’ve come up with our next step?”

  
“I’ll pass,” Philip said disdainfully, rolling Yuliy’s report up in his hand and pointing at him with it. “Why don’t you help that Ryoko girl dig through Fallon’s old junk instead? Maybe you’ll even find a nice bone or two.” He grinned broadly, amused by some joke that went completely over Yuliy’s head.

  
“That’s enough, Philip,” the Professor said sharply. “ To preserve the integrity of the organization as well as Miss Naoe’s personal safety, you’re all to leave her to her work.”

  
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Dorothea rolled her eyes. “She’s a girl, not a leper, Professor. Just be nice to her and she won’t suspect a thing.” She glared pointedly at both Yuliy and Philip. “It would be more noticeable if you weren’t. Now, are we done here?” She raised a brow at the Professor, who sighed.

  
“I think you’ve already decided that we are,” he said.

  
Dorothea rested the folder on her hip. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, and no time like now to get it started.” She left the room, and Philip trailed after her, yawning.

  
Yuliy granted them a few moments’ head start, then made to follow. As he reached the door, however, the Professor said his name. Yuliy paused and looked over his shoulder at Willard, who still stood behind his desk with his hands in his pockets.  
“I meant it when I said you needed to rest, Yuliy,” he said solemnly. “You can count on us now.”

  
Yuliy only answered, “Yes, Professor.” Then he collected his things and made his way upstairs, to a simple Spartan bedroom at the end of a hall where he could finally close his eyes and go to sleep.

* * *

  
Friday 11 August 2017 4:30 AM

Ryoko awoke with a start out of a dream that left her dizzy and disoriented in the dark bedroom of her tiny apartment. She had fallen asleep in her clothes after she’d promised to just close her eyes for five minutes. Fumbling for her phone in the dark, she groaned aloud at the time and the five missed calls from her father. She remembered something about dinner with him, something he’d said that morning…

  
Her stomach growled. It was too late to have dinner with her dad, but Ryoko still had to feed herself, so she stumbled out of her room and felt for light switches along the walls as she went.

  
The railroad-style apartment was on the second floor of a recently renovated building. Her bedroom was directly off of the sitting room, which was before the galley kitchen that lead to the front door. It had already been furnished with a small television and minor appliances, as well as internet provided by her father’s company. In the kitchen, bags of groceries she had bought after leaving the University were still sitting where she had dropped them, waiting to be unpacked. Feeling both oddly rested and exhausted, Ryoko mechanically put them away before putting on the kettle for a hearty dinner of cup noodles.

  
She groggily composed an email on her phone to her father where she apologized for missing his call and promised to follow up with him the next day. It was very businesslike, she thought, before hastily signing it your daughter, Ryoko. Then she once again mourned the huge crack across the screen before setting the phone aside and bringing her noodles to the low table in the center of her sitting room. As she watched steam rise from beneath the paper lid, she finally began to process the day.  
While her time with them had been brief, most of the members of the Anthropology department Ryoko had met at the Annex had left her with lasting impressions. She had liked the mysterious Dorothea, but was unsettled by Philip, and had seen too little of Yuliy to know whether or not she should look forward to spending more time with him. The Professor had also been elusive, but as the head of the department that was understandable. Ryoko would have to be persistent, but she would get all of their verification paperwork completed before the next week was out. The rest of the audit, however, was going to be another story.

  
Ryoko stood up and went into her room, where her open suitcase lay on the floor in front of her bureau. She dug through her clothes until she found her planner and a hair clip, then brought them both out with her to the table. Using the clip to hold her hair out of her face, she began to write out her plan of attack, feeling optimistic about the day ahead as the first rays of sunshine began to appear above Tokyo’s horizon.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Friday 11 August 9:00 AM

The next day, Ryoko returned to the Annex the with two reusable bags of supplies and a determined attitude. The day had promised to be a hot one, and cicadas buzzed raucously in the trees surrounding the building. When she knocked, Dorothea opened the door for her with a pleasant smile. Like the day before, Dorothea was well-dressed and put together, with silver earrings and a necklace that gleamed in the sun.

  
“Good morning,” she said. “We’re just having breakfast. Would you care for some coffee?”

  
Ryoko politely declined. “I’d just like to get started, thank you,” she explained, and followed Dorothea to Fallon’s office. The older woman wished her luck, then walked through to the kitchen. Before it closed behind her, Ryoko snuck a glance through the door and saw the Professor standing at the kitchen island, with Philip pouring hot water from a kettle over a percolator beside him. Yuliy was cooking ham on the stove, and the smell made Ryoko’s mouth water. As Dorothea entered, the Professor turned to ask her a question and Ryoko quickly averted her eyes. She felt a little embarrassed, as if she had intruded on a domestic family scene. Then the door closed, and she was alone.

  
Ryoko set down her bags. She pulled two cold cans of milk coffee out of one of them and smiled to herself as she visualized her plan from that morning. While it had seemed like a whole lot to take in the day before, her naturally strategic mind had broken the stacks of boxes and piles of paperwork into manageable pieces that she felt more confident about handling. She cracked a can and swallowed two huge gulps of sweet caffeine, then tied her hair back, rolled up her sleeves, and got to work.  
The armchair in the corner became the new seat of Fallon’s strange and scattered collection. She gingerly handled wooden masks, well-endowed human figurals, and even a jewel-encrusted dagger as she cleared off the desk. Her jacket eventually wound up on the top of the pile, and she had to undo the top two buttons of her blouse as she grew warmer. Then she hauled the cardboard boxes around the stuffy room, trying to line them up according to the dates they had written on their sides. It troubled her that some years were repeated while others were skipped entirely, but she would just have to fill in the gaps as best as she could with help from the rest of the Department.

  
Dust and grime had gathered on the lowest level of boxes, since they were the oldest and had been sitting around the longest. There were also cobwebs dangling from the immobile ceiling fan, fireplace, and corners of the ceiling. Once she was aware of them she felt like she couldn’t work in such dingy conditions, and Ryoko briefly fled to the bathroom to borrow a pair of hand towels. She held one over her nose and mouth and attacked the dust with the other, even climbing on the furniture to get to the hard-to-reach spots.

  
She had finished dusting and sorting Fallon’s office by noon, and as she stood aside for a moment to catch her breath she heard a knock on the office door. Dorothea entered without waiting for an answer, and took in the room with obvious admiration.

  
“Wow, Miss Naoe! With all of the noise, I was worried you’d gotten buried under an avalanche.” She grinned at her own joke, but Ryoko was mortified. She hadn’t realized how noisy she had been, or how her clothes and face had become smeared with dust and grime.

  
“I’m so sorry for disturbing you,” Ryoko said, quickly brushing the dust off of her clothes and ducking her head apologetically.   
Dorothea dismissed it with an airy wave of her hand. “Really, I should be sorry for making you work in this mess. Fallon really let it get out of hand.” She turned toward the chair and shook her head at the pile of artifacts that Ryoko had carefully relocated. “I guess it’s a little late to ask now, but is there anything else I can help you with in here?”

  
Ryoko’s eyes fell on the two bags she had brought that morning, and she leapt on her chance to continue impressing Dorothea. “Actually, yes, just a second.” She set one bag on the desk and withdrew her laptop, the folders Agatha had given her, and a portable document scanner. Then to Dorothea she explained, “Part of my assignment is to just verify some background information on the award recipients--that is to say, you and the other members of the Department--if you have a minute, I just need to ask you some simple questions…”

  
She trailed off uncertainly. Dorothea was listening to her politely, but her face was difficult to read. Ryoko recalled the day before, when they had eaten lunch together and she’d somehow ended up doing all of the talking. She was worried that Dorothea would still be elusive, but the older woman graciously conceded.

  
“I would be happy to.”

  
Relieved, Ryoko opened her folder and fished out the papers that she would need. “Thank you, I appreciate that. And please don’t worry, I’ll have to do the same for the Professor and Mr. Leonhart, too…” She frowned. She had three identical copies of a form, each with a different department member’s name handwritten on the top. “But I’ll need to make another copy for...what was his name again? I don’t have a form for him here…”

  
“Do you mean Yuliy?” Dorothea asked. “You don’t have to worry about him. He doesn’t work for the Department, at least not in any official capacity.” Dorothea’s serene, don’t-ask-any-questions smile had returned. Then Ryoko thought back to the previous night, when the Professor had arrived with Yuliy in tow. She hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but Yuliy had looked exhausted, even as he had looked her over with his intense, unnaturally blue eyes. Whatever work he did for the Professor, officially or unofficially, must have kept him busy.

  
Dorothea’s smile twisted wryly, “But if you’re hoping to get to know him better for a different reason, maybe that can be arranged.”

  
Ryoko immediately flushed, shocked by Dorothea’s suggestion since it hadn’t even crossed her mind. “I-I-I don’t think that’s necessary!” She squeaked unintentionally, and the other woman began to laugh.

  
“I’m only teasing you, Miss Naoe,” Dorothea said, good-naturedly. “You’ll have to forgive me. It’s been a while since we’ve had another woman in the department...” She smiled sheepishly, and Ryoko was able to put her embarrassment aside to appreciate Dorothea’s sincerity. She just had to resign herself to a harmless joke or two if she wanted to get along with her. Then the moment passed, and Dorothea asked, “What if we do this little interview in the other room? There’s more seats in the kitchen.”

  
Ryoko nodded in agreement and followed Dorothea out of Fallon’s office. Philip was seated at the kitchen island, typing on a laptop with a stack of books and papers on one side and a cup of coffee gone cold one the other. Dorothea greeted him warmly, “Hey there, Philip. Homework?”

  
Philip grunted, then glanced up. He straightened at the sight of Ryoko, and said, “Yeah, I’m swamped.”

  
Dorothea glanced at his screen and hummed thoughtfully. “Have you seen Yuliy?”

  
“Digging up the flowerbeds,” Philip answered with a snort, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Ryoko followed Dorothea’s gaze out of one of the windows overlooking the rear garden. They almost didn’t see him at first, but they eventually spotted Yuliy on all fours in the flowers, industriously pulling up weeds with gloved hands and tossing them deftly aside. Dorothea looked puzzled while Philip continued to snicker, and Ryoko carefully set up her things on the table.

  
When she had Dorothea’s sheet at the top of the stack and her pen poised in her hand to start writing, Ryoko said, “I’m ready whenever you are, Miss Almanzar.”

  
Dorothea took the seat across from her, fluttering her eyelashes coyly. “Fire away, Miss Naoe.”

  
Ryoko cleared her throat. “Well, to begin, I need to know what your position is here at the Department, and what the role entails…”

“Hmmm,” Dorothea tapped her chin as she considered it. “I guess the official title is administrative assistant, but I don’t think that really describes what I do. It’s more like…” She pursed her lips, then said, “Resource management.”

At Ryoko’s perplexed expression, she chuckled and explained, “I make sure people and things get to where they need to go. You might be surprised how much planning has to go into the pursuit of anthropology.” She paused as Ryoko wrote on the form, then continued, “To be perfectly honest with you, I think this place would really fall apart without me. I couldn’t get away on sabbatical, like Fallon.”

Ryoko moved on to the next set of questions. “Now I need a little bit of biographical information. Where are you from, Miss Almanzar?”

“My family is from Saragossa,” Dorothea answered. “But I’ve been a free spirit ever since I was young. Before we came to this University, the Professor and I worked in the field pursuing his research. We used to travel all over the world…” She sighed wistfully. 

Ryoko tried to imagine what a life like that would be like--probably very different than what went on inside the stuffy walls of the Annex. “Do you miss it?” She asked sympathetically.

Dorothea nodded. “Of course. But we do important work here, too.” 

“We try, anyway,” Philip sneered from across the room. “Would you ladies mind carrying on this conversation somewhere else?”

Dorothea acted like she hadn’t heard him, telling Ryoko, “So, I grew up in Spain, but I was educated in London, which is where I met the Professor.”

As Ryoko wrote down these additional details, the kitchen door opened and Yuliy entered. He noticed Dorothea and Ryoko at the table first, and gave them a simple, “Hello.” Then he walked past Philip to wash his hands in the sink, leaving the door ajar and muddy footprints on the kitchen floor. A hot summer breeze gusted in after him, rustling the papers beside Philip’s laptop.

The other boy snapped coldly, “Hey, close the door! Were you born in a barn?” Then his voice took on a tone of cold amusement. “Sorry, Yuliy, I forgot. You probably were.”

Ryoko gasped aloud, but Dorothea only rolled her eyes. Yuliy washed his hands at the sink and said nothing. Then Philip stood to close the door with a huffy, “We don’t pay to air condition the outside, you know.”

“We don’t have any air conditioning,” Dorothea reminded him. “But you’re right, it’s too hot in here to get any work done. What do you say we all break for lunch? My treat.”

Yuliy shut off the water and said over his shoulder, “I could eat.”

Ryoko looked down at the still-unfinished form and was prepared to decline when her own stomach growled. When she looked up, Dorothea winked and said, “Great. Yuliy--are you going to change? I don’t want everyone to think we’re having lunch with a grave digger.” The young man nodded. Dorothea gave him an approving thumbs-up and said to Ryoko, “Alright. Just let me get my purse, and we’ll meet you by the door.”

“Thanks for the invitation, but I’ll stay here,” Philip groused even as the two women got up from the table and headed out of the room. “Like I said, I’m swamped.” He glared at Ryoko’s back as she returned to Fallon’s office, but as he resumed working on his laptop he became aware of Yuliy’s inscrutable gaze on him. He scowled over the top of his screen at the other man drying his hands by the sink and demanded, “What is it?”

Yuliy glanced pointedly toward the stack of papers at Philip’s elbow. At the top was the copy of his report that the Professor had handed out the previous night. “Do you think you should really have that out in the open?” He asked flatly.

Philip turned up his nose at Yuliy’s concern. “Why, do you think the new girl might see it?” He smirked. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Even if she did read it, she probably wouldn’t even know what it was. By the way,” he continued needlessly, “Your writing stinks. You should try reading Fallon’s reports sometime--I just had to clean a bunch of them out of his files before the Naoe girl got here, and that guy really knows how to make you feel a part of the action!”

Yuliy once again refused to rise to Philip’s bait and exited the kitchen without saying more. He went upstairs to his room, switching into clothes that were nearly identical to the ones he had soiled in the garden, and he kept the same pair of boots since they were the only ones he owned. When he had finished changing he went to Dorothea’s small office on the second floor, where she was getting ready to leave. Unlike the Professor’s, Dorothea’s work space was modern, well-lit, and organized. She decorated with homey touches like a vase of flowers and framed photos on the bookshelves. 

“There you are,” she said, quickly writing an address on the back of a business envelope and then holding it out to Yuliy. “If you don’t mind, I need you to run out and pick something up for me when we’re through with lunch. There’s a key in this envelope, and the address to the mailbox in Akihabara.”

Yuliy accepted the envelope and nodded. He saw no reason to refuse--he had been ordered to help Dorothea in her work, after all. He slipped it into his front pocket and asked, “Is it going to help us find Yevgraf?”

“That remains to be seen,” Dorothea answered enigmatically, then smiled. “You really have got a one-track mind, haven’t you?”

The young man shrugged, unsure of what Dorothea meant by that. Then he followed her down to the entrance, where Ryoko was waiting. Yuliy could see the flecks of water on her sleeves and smell the soft floral hand soap she had used to clean up in the bathroom. She also held a small handbag and her cellphone in both hands in front of her, and had let her hair down so that it fell to either side of her face. 

Dorothea pushed the Annex door wide open with both hands and soaked up the afternoon sunshine. “What a beautiful day!” She exclaimed, striding ahead of Ryoko and Yuliy. “Why don’t we go somewhere off-campus for lunch?” She had already looked up directions to a nearby Moroccan cafe on her phone, and led them away at a leisurely pace. 

As they walked, Ryoko glanced under her lashes toward Yuliy. His expression was alert as he took in the world around them, one hand in his pants pocket and the other hanging by his side. He flexed the fingers of his empty hand unconsciously, and as they waited at a crosswalk, Ryoko spotted calluses and healing blisters on his palm. Feeling bold, she asked, “Excuse me, but your hands…”

She faltered as Yuliy raised his eyes to her face. Again it struck her how bizarrely blue they were, and she wondered if he wore color contacts and dyed his hair like some kind of pop idol. Then she cleared her throat and asked, “Your hands, is that all from working in the garden?”

Yuliy looked down at the hand in question. “No,” he said, and was silent for a moment. For a few horrible seconds, Ryoko thought that was all she was going to get out of him, but then he continued, “I also practice martial arts.”

The light changed, and they began to cross the street. Yuliy put his hand into his other pocket and Ryoko feared she had embarrassed him by asking about it. Quickly, she said, “Really? So do I. I mean, I used to practice swordsmanship up until I graduated high school. You wouldn’t know it now, but, I had to use all kinds of remedies to get rid of the calluses. I think the apple cider vinegar treatment was the worst… You know, because of the smell…”

She laughed awkwardly. Yuliy was looking at her, which she took to mean that he was listening, but he did not say anything in reply. Dorothea, however, was interested. “Swordsmanship, you say?” She asked. “You’ll have to show me sometime. I like to go to the gun range every now and then, but it feels like I haven’t had a moment to myself to visit one in ages.”

Dorothea’s phone announced that they had arrived at their destination. The cafe was one of a few small shops set at the base of a nearby office building, and was busy with the lunch crowd. Dorothea sat beside Yuliy on one side of their table, and Ryoko faced them from the other. It only took a moment for Dorothea to pick out the grilled fish that she wanted--she was apparently a regular--and Ryoko decided to play it safe with a chicken dish. Yuliy, however, frowned cluelessly at the menu until their waiter arrived, and he made his request by simply pointing at a picture of a platter of meat skewers. Dorothea also ordered an appetizer of shrimp and chermoula for the table, which arrived shortly after and set all of their mouths watering with the pungent smell of garlic and spices.

After they had divided up the appetizer onto the three small plates the waiter had brought along with glasses of ice water, Dorothea carried on the conversation they had begun on their walk. “So, Miss Naoe, why swordsmanship?”

Ryoko gave it a moment of thought. It had been some time since she had last practiced, and longer still since anyone outside of her old dojo had expressed any interest in hearing about it. Finally, she said, “When I was a child, my parents wanted me to take up activities that would teach discipline and self-reliance. My father thought it was too old-fashioned, but my mother…” She paused to glance down at her hands in her lap. “Before she passed away, she encouraged me to pursue it for as long as I could, but I finally had to give it up when I went to University.”

Dorothea had leaned forward slightly to hear Ryoko over the din, and her expression was sympathetic when she replied, “Your mother must have been very lovely.” Ryoko believed that the other woman meant it, and that she wasn’t just saying things because the endowment they had just been awarded had her dead mother’s name on it. Dorothea told them, “I wish my mother was the sort to push us to try new things, but she’s led a pretty comfortable life so far and I don’t think I’m about to change her mind.” She laughed softly, and Ryoko smiled.

Then the server arrived with their orders, but instead of tucking in, Dorothea laced her fingers together and rested her chin on top of her hands. She turned her head toward Yuliy and asked him, “What about you, Yuliy? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about your mother.”

Yuliy had been sitting silently since they had arrived at the restaurant, though he had been listening attentively to their conversation despite the distracting sights, smells, and sounds of the cafe. He had tried the shrimp and charmoula, but found the taste too strong and surreptitiously pushed his plate in Dorothea’s direction. Then he had seen their food come out of the kitchen, and he was suddenly famished. He had picked up a skewer from his plate before the server had even set it on the table, but he hadn’t yet taken a bite when he felt Dorothea kick him under the table. He was so surprised he nearly dropped his food, but only turned toward her with wide eyes to ask, “I’m sorry, did you say something to me?” 

Twisting her lips wryly, Dorothea repeated her question. “I asked about your mother. What was she like?”

Furrowing his brows slightly, Yuliy wondered what Dorothea was actually asking him. She knew little about Yuliy’s life before he had become a Jaeger, but enough to understand why he rarely shared it with anyone. Their unique line of work required discretion, as much to keep themselves safe as the unwitting world they fought for, and the members of the Professor’s team were no less secretive. But even after three years of working alone Yuliy could tell that Dorothea was trying to get something out of him without asking outrightly, and when she finally rolled her eyes in Ryoko’s direction he at last understood. 

“She was a linguist,” he said cautiously, hoping that would be enough to satisfy them both. Then he picked up a skewer and began to eat, making the effort to chew instead of swallowing a mouthful of meat whole. 

“She studied languages?” Ryoko asked. “That’s so interesting! Is that what got you into Anthropology?” 

Yuliy answered her quietly, “No. She passed away when I was very young.” He looked down at his plate and tried very hard not to think about it, or he would lose his appetite. He had watched her die when a horde of monsters had descended on their village, seemingly out of nowhere. It was not until after that Yuliy had learned that the bloodthirsty beasts were vampires, and his lifelong mission to destroy them had begun--the mission that had been recently disrupted by Mikhail’s reappearance.

“Oh. I’m very sorry to hear that,” Ryoko said somberly, lowering her gaze to her plate. She had recognized the pain, dulled by time, in his expression, like that she had seen on her father’s face and her own. 

They finished eating without speaking, except to thank the server who refilled their water glasses, and Dorothea asked for the check when they came to clear their plates. Even though she had told them lunch was her treat, Ryoko set her phone down on the table and fumbled shyly with her handbag to find her wallet. Dorothea laughed, though not unkindly, and assured her that it was the least the Department could do to repay her for all of the work she had done to clean up Fallon’s office. 

Once the server had taken Dorothea’s credit card, she noticed that Yuliy’s plate of uneaten shrimp was still on the table between them. “You don’t want this?” She asked, obviously delighted by the opportunity to finish it off herself. As she picked up the plate, it knocked against her glass and sent water splashing across the table. Ryoko gasped, but she was too slow and her phone was thoroughly soaked. The cracked screen began to flash and flicker as she picked it up and groaned.

“Miss Naoe, I’m so sorry!” Dorothea exclaimed, offering her napkins while Ryoko ineffectually shook the water off of her phone. The serving staff swarmed their table to return Dorothea’s card and clean up the mess, and the trio exited the cafe. The two women stood with their heads bent over Ryoko’s phone as Yuliy waited off to one side.

“It’s okay, really, it was an accident,” Ryoko said, running her fingers over the screen. It was still somewhat responsive, but now she couldn’t wait for her first paycheck to clear before getting the screen replaced and repairing whatever else had been broken by the spill.

“No, I feel awful,” Dorothea said. “Is there anything I can do?” 

“I’ll just get it fixed this weekend, really!”

“This weekend! I couldn’t get by without my phone for that long,” Dorothea shook her head. Then her expression brightened. “Wait--why don’t you go with Yuliy to Akihabara? He’s picking something up for me, and there’s plenty of places to fix your phone!” Behind Ryoko, Yuliy’s head whipped around and he stared in alarm at Dorothea. Ryoko looked equally taken aback by the suggestion, and feared that Dorothea trying to set them up just as she had threatened to do earlier that afternoon. The older woman clasped her hands together in a pleading gesture as she added, “And you’d really be doing me a favor. Yuliy’s never been in Tokyo before, and I don’t want him getting lost. He doesn’t mind, do you Yuliy?”

Both women looked at him, and Yuliy began to suspect that it had been Dorothea’s intent to send them off together when she had first invited them to lunch. He did not know how to reasonably refuse--and he did not want to admit that he likely would need some help to navigate an unfamiliar city. With a carefully blank look on his face, he said, “No, I don’t mind.”

Ryoko turned back to Dorothea, feeling very much like she couldn’t say no without appearing rude. “Alright,” she said hesitantly, and Dorothea sighed with relief.

“Thank you,” she said, and flashed Ryoko a mischievous grin. “You’re a lifesaver.”

* * *

Ryoko considered calling Akimoto to simply drive them to Akihabara from Machida, but if she was truly going to help Yuliy learn how to navigate through Tokyo on public transportation she was going to have to lead by example. When they arrived at the train station he had looked daunted by the map, but he understood how to use the ticket machine after watching Ryoko use it once. Then they had waited side by side on the platform, saying nothing until the next train arrived.

  
Even though there were plenty of seats, Ryoko and Yuliy opted to stand. Left to stew in her thoughts, Ryoko was slowly convincing herself that Yuliy was judging her and Dorothea for their poorly executed set-up. Except it wasn’t really a set up, Ryoko’s logical brain rebuked, because she wasn’t into Yuliy like that. She barely knew a thing about him, and as tight-lipped as he had been at lunch, she probably never would. Not a thing, except that whole tragically dead mom--but Ryoko herself was proof that dead moms didn’t make anyone special. When they got back to the Annex she would just have to explain to Dorothea in no uncertain terms that she didn’t need help finding a date, thank you very much!

  
Ryoko didn’t realize it, but during her internal diatribe she had raised her eyes to Yuliy’s face. He hadn’t noticed either, instead watching Tokyo pass by through the elevated train’s windows until he turned his head and saw her from the corner of his eye. His movement brought Ryoko out of her reverie and she had to quickly come up with something to excuse her staring.

  
“So, you’ve never been to Japan before?” She asked, and instantly regretted it. Way to state the obvious, she chided herself. But it could only improve from here. “I’m surprised. Your Japanese is excellent.” It wasn’t, but it was better than some foreigners’ she had heard who had been in Japan for far longer than a few days.

  
“It’s passable,” Yuliy said, but not out of humility. He wondered why she would say something like that; he understood that most people were quite guarded around foreigners, and he had been a foreigner everywhere that he went. He supposed she was just trying to be kind, or making conversation, like a normal girl would. Too bad that he had very little practice being around normal girls, and he was unsure what to do or say that would not arouse her suspicions about him or the rest of the Jaegers. It was probably better if he did not do or say anything at all--which would make the rest of their errand awkward, to say the very least. Perhaps if he got her talking, like how one Jaeger often distracted a Vampire as another circled behind it to deal the killing blow, he would survive the afternoon unscathed.

Silence had once again stretched out between them as Yuliy formulated his plan, so Ryoko was startled when he asked her, “How long have you lived in Tokyo?” 

“My entire life,” she replied. “Except when I went away to Osaka to attend University. I’ve always lived in a big city, but I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”

Yuliy nodded. He had been to many large cities all over the world, but Tokyo was quite unlike anywhere else. He did not anticipate seeing much of it while he was there, however, since there was too much to do for his mission to find Yevgraf.  
Ryoko asked him, “What about you? Where did you grow up?”

He had to answer with something to keep up the appearance of being absolutely ordinary, and the whole truth was not going to cut it. So he told her as much as he could judge to be harmless, and said, “I was born in a small village called Dogville. It was in the mountains, far away from any large city.”

Dogville was an unusual name, but Ryoko would not say as much. A mountain village sounded so different from the bustling metropolis she had spent her whole life living in. 

“That sounds lovely,” She asked, “Do you ever go back there?”

“No,” Yuliy said. To Ryoko’s great dismay, she saw the pain return to his face for a moment. In a tone he used to mean he would answer no further questions about it, he added, “It was destroyed.”

“Oh,” Ryoko said in a small voice. “I’m sorry.” Yuliy resumed staring out of the window, but his eyes no longer followed the scenery as it whizzed by and his expression was carefully blank. Slowly a picture was forming in Ryoko’s head from the odd pieces Yuliy had revealed over the course of the day; his mother had died and his childhood home had been destroyed, he practiced martial arts and he spoke very little of his past--it sounded like the background of a war refugee, or even a child soldier. At least she no longer had to tell Dorothea to stop trying to set them up, because Yuliy probably never want to be alone with her again.

Yuliy was disappointed that his plan to distract Ryoko with inane small talk had backfired. Knowing that Ryoko had also felt the loss of a parent had made him wary of empathetic overtures, but then he had inadvertently piqued her interest by revealing more than had been ultimately necessary about his long-lost home. He was at least assured that Ryoko would find very little about Dogville and its demise if she chose to look it up herself, but she could also begin to raise difficult questions about Yuliy if she thought that was unusual. He resolved to discourage her natural human attraction to tragedy by keeping his mouth shut, and hoped that she would forget about it by the end of the day.

They said nothing for the next twenty minutes, but as they approached Shinjuku Station Ryoko brushed Yuliy’s sleeve and told him they would be getting off to transfer to a local line. From there it would not be much farther to Akihabara, and then their ordeal would be halfway over. The trains at the heart of Tokyo were packed with people, and Yuliy found more than a few studying him curiously. It did not surprise him, and he would not react to it, knowing from years of existing on the edges of human society that they would forget about him by the time they had arrived at their destination.

When they reached their stop, Ryoko guided him off of the train and out of the station. Yuliy had braced himself for the assault against his senses that came with traveling through any large city, but the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo was unlike anywhere else he had ever been before. Neon signs and high-definition screens climbed up the walls of every steel and glass building, with loud music and obnoxious advertisements accompanying the colorful videos they played. People walked by in pairs or groups, or wove expertly through the crowd on bicycles laden with parcels and paper bags. They spoke loudly to each other in friendly conversation, argued passionately over prices, or shouted for attention while waving colorful signs. Vehicle exhaust, air conditioning, and ozone accompanied all of the usual human smells that Yuliy could identify, as well as a few that he could not, and he stood beside Ryoko to mentally sort through it all as she browsed repair shops on her enfeebled phone. 

Ryoko arbitrarily picked one shop out of the dozens within a block of the station, then looked up at Yuliy. His wide-eyed, wondering expression made her smile--he was more animated than she had seen him all day, almost like he was enjoying himself. Without realizing it, she tilted her head to the right to get a better look at his face. The movement caught his attention and Yuliy turned to face her, listing his head to meet her eyes. It was so unexpected and endearing that Ryoko had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh. 

“What is it?” Yuliy asked, sounding concerned. 

“It’s nothing,” Ryoko said quickly. “Just that I’ve just found someplace to fix my phone. Do you mind if we stop there first?”

Yuliy shrugged, and Ryoko started toward the repair shop. As they walked, Yuliy put his hand in his pocket to touch the envelope Dorothea had given him and wondered what she needed from a place like this that she could not come to pick up herself. He had doubted from the start that she genuinely thought he needed to learn how to get around Tokyo, and he thought it had been unfair of her to rope Ryoko into helping him with his chores. Now, as Ryoko led the way with her phone held close to her face so that she could differentiate between the lines on her map and the cracks on her screen, he began to suspect that not only this errand, but even their lunch at the restaurant had been an effort by Dorothea to get Ryoko out of the Annex and away from Organization affairs. 

The store Ryoko had chosen was little more than a booth with a glass front wedged between two larger shops, and she nearly walked right by it. The front door, plastered with sun bleached advertisements, had been propped open with a cinder block. Behind the glass counter filled with refurbished phones for sale, a young man barely out of high school squatted on a stool and stared disinterestedly at Ryoko as she stepped in. There was not much room for anyone else, and Yuliy chose to wait outside on the sidewalk. A fan on a shelf behind the shopkeeper moved stale air around the room, but it did little to combat the vast amounts of heat and noise produced by the number of humming electronics that covered every available surface in the store.

“Hello,” Ryoko began as she stepped up to the counter, “I need a screen replacement.”

The shop proprietor gestured mutely, and she handed over her phone. He squinted at it, and then asked sharply, “What the hell kind of phone is this? Is this a joke?”

Ryoko stiffened defensively. “No, of course not. It’s brand new.”

The man glanced up at her with a look that told her that he thought she was an idiot. He called to someone through the bead-curtained doorway behind him, and a second man appeared. “Look at this,” said the first, laughing. “Have you seen anything like this before?”

The second technician flipped Ryoko’s phone over, reading the manufacturer’s name from the back. “This is an ALMA? Must be a new model. We might not have the screen for this in stock.”

“It’s not just the screen,” Ryoko told him. “I spilled water on it, too.”

“If it got wet it’s not going to be covered under your warranty,” the second young man said as the first snickered derisively. “We’ll have to charge you full price.”

Ryoko felt their judgement acutely as color rose on her cheeks. It was not the first time she had been chided about technology by a stranger; as the daughter of the Baron she had been dismissed, lectured, and mansplained at by her father's friends and associates for years. She had always listened politely and thanked them for their time even though she was internally fuming. It seemed that her visit to the small shop in Akihabara would go very much the same way until she sensed someone else step in behind her and saw the shopkeepers smirk. 

Looking over her shoulder, Ryoko was surprised to see Yuliy had stepped into the shop wearing a fearsome scowl. He was glaring at the shop keepers, and immediately Ryoko knew what they were thinking: that Yuliy was her boyfriend, or at least a male friend, that she had brought along to rescue her from bullies like them. Judging by the look on Yuliy’s face, he must have thought that she needed rescuing too. The thought made her indignant--after all, she was a grown woman, with a business degree! She didn’t need his or any other man’s help to be taken seriously--and to prove it, she slapped the platinum-grade company credit card her father had given her in case of emergencies down on the counter while declaring imperiously, “I don’t care about the warranty! I’ll pay whatever it costs, I just need it fixed today!” 

The second shopkeeper picked a pad of paper receipts. As he filled out the estimated cost of labor and parts, Ryoko saw him slide her card toward his partner and waggle his eyebrows pointedly. Her ploy to impress them with a show of money had worked, and now she glanced back toward Yuliy to see if he had also noticed how well she had gotten the situation back in hand. He had lost interest, however, and was now standing just inside of the door, stoically gazing out at the street. Ryoko’s blush returned as she slowly began to realize how foolish her assumptions had been, and how ostentatious she must have looked, waving her father’s credit card around to solve a problem she had mostly made up to herself. Yuliy probably just wanted to get out of the sun, and didn’t care one way or the other if her phone was fixed. She ducked her head to sign the copy of the paper receipt that the repair technician slid her way, allowing her hair to fall in front of her face as she scanned his messy handwriting. It was almost guaranteed that they had inflated the cost and added on superfluous fees because they knew she could afford it, and she was too flustered now to haggle their price down. 

After she handed the paper receipt back over, the tech asked, “Do you have a number we can call when your phone is ready for pick up?”

Ryoko balked. Her old phone was already deactivated and gathering dust in a drawer in her apartment. Shyly she turned to Yuliy and asked, “Could we give them your number?”

Yuliy shrugged. Both shopkeepers audibly choked when he fished an ancient flip phone out of his pocket to look up his number. After he took it down, the tech on the stool hopped over the counter to usher Yuliy and Ryoko out of the store; then as the door locked behind them, Ryoko could hear both men erupt into laughter. 

Despite her concerns, Yuliy had been oblivious to what had transpired between Ryoko and the phone technicians since he had instead been preoccupied by the fleeting smell of blood that had teased his supernatural senses while he stood out on the sidewalk. He had ducked into the shop in order to survey the street without attracting attention to himself, but now that they were outside again, the smell had vanished as mysteriously as it appeared.

Ryoko turned toward Yuliy, who was frowning and surveying their surroundings as if he had seen something that troubled him, but when she looked around she only saw ordinary people going about their ordinary business on an ordinary afternoon. Still hiding behind her hair, she cleared her throat to get his attention and said, “Thank you for your patience. Where do we need to go next?”

Yuliy wordlessly produced the envelope Dorothea had given him. He hid his wariness well as Ryoko brought them back to the train station, where there were large maps of the neighborhood that she could use to find the address. It turned out to be a small indoor shopping plaza at the bottom of an office building, but when they walked through the automatic doors into the refreshing air-conditioning, the store that Dorothea had meant to send them to was not immediately clear--she had just written B025 down the side of the envelope like some kind of code. Then as Ryoko and Yuliy stood side-by-side in front of the mall directory, Yuliy pointed out that Dorothea had not written the store’s name, but a suite number. After that they rode the elevator to the dreary basement level, where the plain white walls were illuminated by flickering fluorescent lights. At the end of the corridor beside a shuttered laundromat was suite twenty-five, an automated post office with one wall of steel mailboxes and a single touch screen computer that chirped when they walked inside.

“Are we sure this is the right place?” Ryoko asked Yuliy as he stepped up to the computer. He didn’t answer, but tore open the envelope and pulled out a white magnetic card that fit perfectly into a narrow slot beneath the computer screen. There was another cheerful melody followed by a mechanical click as a mailbox at the far end of the wall unlocked and swung open. Ryoko walked up to it to peer inside, then exclaimed, “It’s another envelope!” She pulled it out and flipped it over, but there was nothing written on either side.

Yuliy had understood what he had been sent to do once they had arrived at the post office. Jaegers often relied on drops in isolated locations to move communications between agents, but he would have thought the Organization would have exercised more discretion than a post office in the basement of a mall. He accepted the envelope from Ryoko, and she told him, “It feels empty.”

Yuliy shrugged and put it in his pocket but did not offer any explanation. They left the post office, and as they rode the elevator up to the ground floor Ryoko wondered what could be in the feather-light envelope that Dorothea would prefer to retrieve from a post office, rather than receive at the Annex. It had to be something personal that Dorothea didn't want to get mixed up in the rest of the department’s mail, she reasoned, but it seemed excessive to have it sent all of the way to Akihabara instead. 

They stepped outside and squinted in the harsh sunlight that reflected off of the glass windows above them. Ryoko was surprised by late it had gotten--according to the time on the ticker-tape of a news program playing on a television on the building across the street, it was nearly four thirty. Even though they had not received a call from the repair technicians, she suggested they return to the shop and they started walking back the same way they had come. They were less than a block away from the shop when Yuliy knew definitively that something was very, very wrong.  
He approached the glass door with Ryoko and found it locked. Inside, they could see that the overhead lights were off while many of the electronics were on. Even the fan was still oscillating, pushing air out of the narrow gap between the door and window that carried a scent too faint for Ryoko’s human nose to detect, but strong enough to start Yuliy’s heart racing:   
Blood.

Yuliy gave the door another tug. He could easily smash it, if he wanted to attract the attention of everyone else on the street. The growing roar in his ears was making it difficult to think, but he had to find a way in, fast. He had already made a fatal error in failing to follow the scent of vampires when he had detected it before; now there was no room for mistakes. Every muscle in his body was tense and ready to fight.

“Let’s call their phone,” Ryoko suggested reasonably. To her utter amazement, Yuliy shook his head.

“Wait here,” he said gruffly, and then sprinted away from her toward the end of the block. She gaped as he pushed roughly through the crowd until he ducked into the mouth of an alleyway. The look on his face was similar to the scowl he had worn when they had visited the shop earlier, but there was a growing malice in his eyes that had unsettled Ryoko when he turned away. It alarmed her that he had such a strong reaction to a simple locked door, and without hesitating she chased after Yuliy, shouting his name, intent on catching him before he did something they would both regret. 

She ran down the alley as fast as she could but saw no signs of Yuliy. She stopped when she came to a heavy steel door that had been spray painted with the name of the repair shop, propped open with another cinder block. The alley was too narrow and the sun too low to allow light through the store’s rear entrance, but she stepped slowly into the darkness and gave her eyes a moment to adjust.

  
Ryoko was in a small room, facing another slightly opened door. To her left was a desk with several sleeping monitors and gently buzzing CPUs, and an empty folding chair. To her right were filing cabinets and a small folding card table. The phone techs’ take out lunch still sat out, and two of the three chairs at the table had been knocked over backward. It looked as if someone had left the shop in a hurry, but she could hear a radio playing pop music loudly in another room. 

She approached the second door and pulled it open. The next unlit room was larger than the first, and she could just make out rows of metal shelving in the faint light of the monitors behind her. On the shelves, cardboard and clear plastic boxes overflowing with parts made strange shapes in the dark, like the monsters she once imagined were hiding under her bed. When she stepped into the room, Ryoko was able to see a staircase flush against the wall to her left, extending up into nothingness. She still couldn't hear Yuliy or anyone else over the radio at the front of the shop so she pressed on, holding her hands in front of her to feel her way out. She followed the wall on her right, stumbling once against something heavy that had been left on the floor and brushing her fingertips against the beaded curtain that had hung in the doorframe between the shopfront and the rear. 

“Yuliy?” Ryoko called out tentatively as she pushed the curtain aside. Then she stopped short, and had to clap her hands over her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

Sitting on the floor behind the glass counter, surrounded by splintered glass, was the headless corpse of one of the phone technicians. The smell was abominable, and flies were already buzzing at the pulpy remains of his neck. Blood had sprayed the ceiling and walls from the force of whatever had taken his head off, then dripped down the counter and pooled around him on the floor. Ryoko felt far away from her body as she took a trembling step back through the curtain, and the once too-loud music was muffled by a terrible ringing in her ears. She did not even realize she was still walking backward until she stumbled against something and fell to the floor with a stifled cry. 

Her eyes had adjusted to the low light and she could see what she had tripped over on her way inside: a pale arm extended out from between the shelves, palm-up in a silent plea for help. It writhed inhumanly toward her and she recoiled, even as she followed the motion with her eyes to the space between the shelves. Hunched over the body of the second phone technician was an impossibly huge mass of hard muscle and leathery skin. Its monstrous face and glowing red eyes focused on Ryoko even as its gnashing jaws tore into the dead man’s guts. The music had paused briefly for a commercial break, and she could hear the horrible sounds of the creature gurgling as it ate him.

Ryoko could no longer hold it in. She screamed.

There was a loud crash from upstairs as the beast before her howled. Spittle and blood spewed from its mouth as it leapt for her, claws extended from the ends of its too-long arms. Ryoko rolled aside and sprang to her feet as it hit the floor where she had been, then turned with impossible speed to slash at her again. Ryoko felt the breeze of the monster’s hand on her back as she ran for the exit, but she was cut off by something heavy hurtling down the stairs and smashing noisily into the wall.

It was Yuliy, entangled with a second awful man-eating monster. He had jammed the bottom of a broken floor lamp into its mouth and held fast as he stabbed the stand into a sunken gap between its ribs. Ryoko screamed again and threw herself down the aisle between two storage shelves as the first beast stomped inexorably after her. She pulled boxes down behind her, but the snarling creature kicked them aside and scattered their contents across the floor. 

Ryoko came to the end of the aisle. She had nowhere to go, and nothing to defend herself. Then, inspired and strengthened by the surge of adrenaline coursing through her veins, Ryoko seized one of the posts of the huge metal shelves and pulled. At first it would not budge, and she thought for one horrible moment that the monster laughed at her. Then she brought her legs up and used her whole body weight to tip it off balance; with a groan, the shelves tilted inward onto the beast as it howled again in rage. It hit the next rack, which fell and brought down a third shelf with such an uproar that Ryoko was sure the building shook. 

Yuliy was shouting something that Ryoko couldn’t understand, but she started climbing over the collapsed shelves toward him. She could see that the beast Yuliy had fought had disappeared, and he still clutched the broken lamp stand like a spear in front of him. When Ryoko was halfway over the ruins of the shelf, she realized what Yuliy was trying to say--the monster was still alive under there. With a terrible roar, it rose up from beneath the mountain of discarded electronics and sent Ryoko tumbling to the floor. Yuliy jumped over her, lamp stand raised over his head, and plunged it into the beast’s open jaws. It choked, clawing at its own throat as its eyes bulged and blood gushed out of its mouth. Then, to Ryoko’s utter disbelief, it grew still and began to crumble into dust. 

Yuliy’s chest heaved as he caught his breath and watched the vampire disintegrate. The lamp stand fell from his fingers and bounced to the floor. Then he turned to Ryoko, who was watching him open-mouthed. Something had changed in Yuliy when he had fought the mysterious creatures. His bearing had become looser, more animal-like, and there was an inhumanity in his expression that would be difficult for an ordinary mortal man to imitate. His unnaturally blue eyes seemed to glow in the dark room as he told her, “You need to leave.”

Yuliy could hear Ryoko’s fear in her racing heartbeat, and see it in her wide brown eyes. It was the normal human response to a scene of inhuman horror. She stood slowly and asked, “Yuliy...What were those things?” He did not answer her as he descended the destroyed shelves and walked toward the exit. “What were those things, Yuliy? Why did they...?” 

Yuliy ignored Ryoko’s questions as he wrestled with his thoughts. The evidence in the shop did not add up to what he had learned from a lifetime of hunting vampires; it took extreme hunger to force a thrall outside during daylight hours, but there was also no denying the insurmountable odds of a random attack on a shop that a Jaeger had just visited...He could not believe it was just a coincidence. 

His train of thought was interrupted when Ryoko surprised him by standing defiantly in the final doorway. Light from the outside rimmed one side of her face as she asked him softly, “How did you know?”

Yuliy said nothing.

“How did you know they were in here?” Ryoko asked again, raising her voice. His snarled warning for her to wait in front of the shop now had her believing that he had known the repair techs were dead before he’d even stepped through the back door. She just could not figure out how. 

Finally, Yuliy replied, “It’s better if you don’t know.” He broke eye contact with Ryoko to look over her shoulder toward the mouth of the alley. He could hear the sound of people approaching, drawn by the noise of the fight. Police would not be far behind. It was an imperative of the Organization to evade capture by civil authorities, considering the violent and unbelievable nature of their work--he needed to leave, now. He would not be doing Ryoko any favors by telling her the truth, either.

Instead, he said harshly, “Get out of my way.”

Ryoko sucked in a shocked breath and stepped aside. Even though he had just saved her from the same terrible fate as the phone technicians, in that moment, Yuliy had looked dangerous. After all, she had just seen him fight those huge, horrible monsters and win with just an improvised weapon. Maybe had even fought them before--either way, she needed answers and he seemed like he had a few. 

Yuliy was hurrying away from the store, following the alley away from the busy streets of Akihabara. There was no way he knew where he was going. Why was he leaving? Ryoko started after him and shouted, “Wait! We need to tell someone! We need to call the police!” 

Her legs gave away and Ryoko fell forward, scraping her knees and hands on the ground. At the same time, a cry went up behind her as a group of people came hurrying down the alley. Two women knelt to either side of her as a man peered into the doorway of the shop. Ryoko clutched her burning palms to her chest and warned the man to stay out. She begged someone to call the police. It felt like she was having a nightmare, and she could not wake up.

The two women helped Ryoko to sit on an overturned milk crate and patted her ineffectually until the police and EMTs arrived. One of the EMTs threw an orange shock blanket across Ryoko’s shoulders before following the rest into the store. A few minutes later, they carried out several body bags and tossed them callously onto two gurneys. An arm bounced out of the zipper of one bag and Ryoko retched with both dirtied hands over her mouth. Tears sprang to her eyes as the adrenaline left her body, leaving her stress-exhausted brain to process what she had just witnessed. 

Yuliy had abandoned her. The bodies of the impossible monsters had dissolved into dust. Two men were dead and she somehow felt that it was her fault. Her patronizing the shop had somehow brought those terrible beasts, but why? 

A detective noticed Ryoko hunched behind the shop’s back door and bellowed at the nearest cluster of officers for allowing her to be overlooked. Then he promised to drive Ryoko to the police station and even gave her a bottle of water to clean her hands. As they climbed into his car the detective assured Ryoko that she would only need to answer a few routine questions, but her statement would be vital to capturing the criminal responsible for the killings. Once they arrived he continued to be polite and respectful to Ryoko--but not in the ingratiating way people were when they found out she was the Baron’s daughter. He finally left her alone in a room with no windows, furnished with only two metal chairs and a table.

Ryoko had no idea what time it was, or which police station she was in, or how many people even knew she was here. She was still reeling from Yuliy’s heartless desertion, and was growing fearful of just what he could be doing out there on his own. Pressing her throbbing hands against the cool metal surface of the table, Ryoko felt her unease grow into impatience as the detective failed to return for her “vital” statement for what seemed to be an unusually long time. She wanted to go home and lock the doors and try to forget this had ever happened. The room was cold, too, which always made her just a little bit sleepy…

Ryoko tried to sit up straight as the door to the interview room opened and her father’s assistant Agatha stepped in. She closed and locked the door behind her with an audible click before she took the seat across from Ryoko and smiled coldly. Her face was difficult to read behind the large sunglasses and hat, but her voice was distant when she said, “There you are, Miss Naoe. Do you realize how much trouble you’ve made for us?”

Ryoko’s thoughts were sluggish as she tried to think of why she would be in trouble. No one had collected her statement yet. “Do I need...A lawyer..?” Ryoko asked, interrupting herself by yawning. She raised a hand to her mouth and blinked back sleepy tears. “I’m so sorry. Please excuse me.” Her hand fell from her mouth and landed heavily in her lap, where she tucked it into the ends of her sleeves. Her hands were still stinging. And it was just so cold in here...

“A lawyer won’t be necessary,” Agatha answered. She reached into a bag she carried on one shoulder with a gloved hand and pulled out a thin black smartphone identical to the one Ryoko had given to the repair men. Then Agatha removed her dark glasses, revealing inhuman red eyes that stared down at Ryoko resentfully. “Next time that you have any phone trouble, you come directly to me, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Ryoko heard herself say as the rest of her mind went blank.

Agatha placed the new phone on the table and pushed it toward Ryoko. “Take it now. Don’t let anything happen to it.”  
“Okay,” Ryoko’s voice was muffled to her own ears, as if she were underwater in a cold, still sea. The room seemed to be filling with water but Agatha’s hateful red eyes cut through quite clear. 

“Was anyone else with you at the shop?” Agatha asked. 

Ryoko should have said yes. That was the answer. But she knew if she told Agatha that Yuliy was there, she would ask Ryoko even more questions and Ryoko was just so, so tired now. Tired from fighting the cold weight on her body and mind. 

“No,” Ryoko replied finally, and yawned. “Do you need...my lawyer..?” She struggled to remain upright in that cold, uncomfortable chair, and Agatha rolled her eyes. The other woman stood and gave Ryoko one final order:

“Forget about what you saw today. You became ill at work and went to your father’s house to recover. You were never in Akihabara.”

Ryoko nodded and swayed in her seat. 

Agatha unlocked the door and stepped out into the hall. She spoke brusquely to someone that Ryoko could not see, and then two broad figures entered the room and approached Ryoko’s seat from either side of the table. She craned her neck up to look at them, but her vision was too blurry to make out their faces. Perhaps it should have frightened her, but Ryoko had already seen the worst she could have imagined today, and she let the darkness take her.

* * *

Yuliy could not pick up a trail to uncover where the vampires had come from. There was just too much going on in the city--too many smells, too many sounds, and too many people walking around ignorant of the imminent danger. Once he found himself on a deserted block of shuttered shops he pulled out his phone to call the Professor, but saw that he had already missed several calls from Dorothea. When he called her back she answered with a shout, “Yuliy! Where the hell have you been?”

  
“There’s been an attack,” Yuliy replied. 

Dorothea cursed. “Where’s Miss Naoe? Is she alright?”

Yuliy did not immediately answer. His pause frightened Dorothea, who repeated shrilly, “Yuliy! Where’s Miss Naoe?”

“She’s not hurt,” Yuliy snapped. He was fairly certain that she had not been hurt, at least. He had not given her much thought as he had left the shop, intent on identifying the vampire threat that had been operating unchecked in Tokyo. Dorothea’s reaction led him to suspect that she would disagree with his priorities, and it made Yuliy feel strangely self-conscious. She was silent as he explained morosely, “She was there. She was attacked but she wasn’t hurt. I killed them. I tried to find their trail but I--”

“Where is she now, Yuliy?” Dorothea asked urgently. 

“I don’t know,” Yuliy scowled. “We can’t lose any more time. Two people are dead.”

Dorothea was not listening. “You left Ryoko there alone?”

“The area was safe,” Yuliy replied. “I destroyed the vampires.”

“That’s not the problem here Yuliy!” Dorothea shouted. “Get your ass back to the Annex, that’s an order. Where are you?”

Yuliy set his jaw and glared, even though Dorothea wouldn’t be around to see it. She would hear it in the tightness of his voice when he named the nearby streets, however, and she responded with saccharine over-sweetness as she told him that someone would be picking him up shortly. He stayed where he was, seething, until a black luxury sedan pulled up thirty minutes later.

The driver lowered his window and nodded solemnly to Yuliy in greeting. “My name is Akimoto,” he said. “I work for V.” Then, like a sullen teenager, Yuliy wordlessly walked around the front of the car and sat in the passenger seat. He said nothing the entire way as Akimoto drove through weekend traffic back to Taijin University.

* * *

8:00 PM, Setagaya

At a large mansion on a hill, the Baron and the Professor shared a nightcap. The men had settled in large armchairs in a sitting room near the front of the house overlooking the long driveway. While most of the furnishings were western, the focus of the room was a large butsudan made of dark lacquered wood that was up against the southern wall. The cabinet doors portrayed a religious scene made with well-polished inlays, and on the small table in front of it an incense burner sat perfectly centered and unlit. The Professor knew that the inside of the butsudan would be even more impressive than the outside, but he guessed from the dust that had gathered unnoticed on the door handles that the cabinet had not been opened in months.

  
The Baron noticed his friend stealing glances toward the butsudan, but said nothing about it. There was a lot of other things to catch up on, since they had failed to meet in person for a few years despite living in the same city. They swapped amusing anecdotes and retold old favorites until the conversation inevitably turned to more sobering recent events.

  
“It sounds to me like you have been as busy as ever,” the Professor said, smiling over his glass of whisky and ice. “But how have you been feeling, these last few weeks?”

The Baron did not immediately answer. The ice in his glass knocked together as he put his drink down and quietly closed the door. Then he went to the window and lowered the blinds. Finally the Baron sat down again and explained, “Forgive me. Sometimes it feels as if I can’t even be alone with my own thoughts anymore.” 

Willard said nothing.

“There’s been a change in the atmosphere at the company,” Genzo continued, picking up his glass but not taking a drink. “For the last year, a rumor has been going around regarding my imminent retirement. The worst part would have to be my board of directors...Willard, they’ve been selling their seats behind my back.” He sighed heavily and cupped his whisky in both hands. “I served alongside these men. They came to my wife’s funeral. I thought that loyalty like that couldn’t be bought. Have you ever been so betrayed?”

Willard considered his friend for a long moment, then said, “Many years ago I made a decision that caused a great deal of pain for many people—I suppose you could call it a sort of betrayal. I had my reasons, but I know it does not excuse the choice I made. Do you know why these men might be turning on you?”

Genzo licked his lips and took a drink, studying his friend and wondering just what kind of betrayal a renowned anthropologist could be privy to. Then he said, “It began with the ALMA acquisition. So much has changed so quickly in the last few years, we thought that new blood would be what we needed to keep our competitive edge in the industry. But that Kershner is incorrigible, and I fear he won’t be stopped until he’s sitting in my office and replaced the portrait of my father with himself!”

Willard considered Genzo for a moment before saying thoughtfully, “Kershner… Do I know that name?”

The Baron made a contemptuous noise. “Certainly, if you read the gossip rags and entertainment columns. He quite enjoys the limelight.”

At this, the Professor smiled knowingly. He assured Genzo, “In my experience, men like that grow bored and move on to their next project du jour rather quickly. You may not need to fear for your company after all.”

Genzo did not look convinced and shook his head. “I wish that I could be so sure. He’s not like anyone else that I’ve ever met, Willard. He treats everyone as if they are...disposable. Even my assistants have all been replaced by one of his recommendations.” There was a moment of silence as Genzo glanced toward Willard. He was pleased to see that the other man was listening seriously. Then, sheepishly, Genzo continued, “In fact, when my daughter needed a job, I made sure she was placed with you, where I knew she couldn’t get into any trouble. No offense intended.”

The Professor’s enigmatic smile returned and he said, “And none taken, old friend. Rest assured I will watch over her like one of my own.”

A shadow passed over the Baron’s face, but before he could speak again there came a loud, ponderous knock on the front door. Both men looked at each other in befuddlement, since they had neither seen nor heard a car on the gravel driveway, and there was automated security at the gate that would have called the house for all but a few select visitors. They stuck their heads out of the sitting room to watch like two errant children as one of the Baron’s housekeepers went to open the door, and heard her gasp, “Miss Naoe! This is unexpected.”

The housekeeper stepped aside, revealing Ryoko standing on the front porch. Even from a distance, the Professor could see that the young woman looked pale, and her steps into the house were unsteady. She looked around in a daze until Genzo strode toward her, transformed into a doting father the instant he saw his daughter in distress. 

“Ryoko! What are you doing here so late?” He placed a hand on her arm, which seemed to draw Ryoko back down to earth.   
“Oh!” She said, blinking rapidly and raising a hand to her head. “Dad. I’m sorry, I know this is unexpected...I’m not feeling well, can I please just go to bed?”

Genzo looked taken aback. “Of course, Ryoko. This is your home.” He paused, then exclaimed, “Dear! What happened to your hands?” Genzo turned toward the housekeeper and added, “Tomoko, please bandage her hands and get her anything else she needs before you leave.”

Tomoko nodded obediently, then accompanied Ryoko as she made her way slowly upstairs. When the Baron turned toward the sitting room he found that the Professor was already walking toward him and pulling on his jacket. 

“Is everything all right?” Willard asked, following the Genzo’s worried gaze up the stairs, though Ryoko had already shuffled out of sight. 

The Baron nodded once, “Yes, everything is perfectly fine.” 

The Professor did not press the issue. “It’s gotten quite late. I should return to the Annex. Thank you for having me, Genzo.” He reached out to the Baron, who clasped his hand tightly. 

“It was good catch up with you, my old friend,” the other man returned warmly, and walked the Professor to the door. Then the Professor started down the driveway on foot, pulling his cellphone out from his jacket pocket. He saw that he had several missed calls from Dorothea, but got her voicemail as soon as he dialed her number. Philip thankfully answered his phone after only a single ring.

The young man’s explanation was blunt. “There’s been an attack,” Philip said. “Yuliy and the girl found the victims, but that’s not even the best part. They went after Yuliy and the girl, too. He killed the enemy but we don’t know where the girl is now. Where are you?”

“I’m on my way,” Willard said, picking up his pace. “An attack by them in Tokyo? Are you sure?”

“There’s not a doubt in my mind,” Philip answered. “But it’s completely out of the blue. We had no idea there were any active enemy in Japan.”

“This is disturbing indeed. Have you contacted V?” As he spoke, the Professor exited the grounds and reached the street. 

“Dorothea is already on it.” Philip replied. “What are we going to do about the girl?”

“We’ll discuss that when I return,” the Professor said with finality. He had found his car, and after ending the call with Philip he plugged Taijin University into the navigator on his phone and began driving speedily back to the Annex. 

When he arrived he found Dorothea had dutifully held down the Department, as he knew she would. She had Philip seated on one side of the dining room table with his laptop and other electronics set up neatly in front of him while she stood on the other side beside Jiro Akimoto, surveying a print map of the city. All three looked up at the sound of the Professor entering the Annex, and as he stepped into the kitchen, the back door open and Yuliy came in from the garden. There was a moment of silence and then everyone began talking at once.

The Professor raised his hands and called out, “One at a time, one at a time! Dorothea, what’s going on here?”  
With one hand on her hip and the other on the map, Dorothea delivered her report, “The attack occurred after two in the afternoon at an electronics repair shop in Akihabara. Yuliy identified two men dead, and two thralls at the scene of the killings. Both of the victims were dismembered by one vampire.”

“How do you know that?” The Professor demanded.

“Only one of them had transformed when I got there,” Yuliy said. “The other was still in human disguise, looking around the store.”

“Looking for what?”

Yuliy shrugged.

The Professor folded his arms and replied, “Anyone else would see a robbery gone wrong, but we know that the enemy does not resort to petty crime.” He paused, then turned to Yuliy once more. His tone was critical when he asked, “What were you doing in Akihabara? Why was Miss Naoe with you?”

Yuliy swallowed and glanced in Dorothea’s direction. “They were running an errand for me,” She said quickly. “And imagine if they hadn’t been there--we might not have found out that the enemy was even in Tokyo until there had been more victims.”  
“That’s not a reason to put Miss Naoe and other innocent people in danger!” The Professor barked angrily. “I thought I made it clear that she was to be left out of Organization operations?”

“Look, she’s either been eaten or locked up for losing her mind by now,” Philip said snidely. “At any rate, I doubt she’s ever coming around here again. The problem solves itself.”

“You’re unbelievable, Philip,” Dorothea said, turning away from him in disgust. Yuliy stared unseeing at the map as he once again felt self-conscious of his decision to leave Ryoko after the fight. He had made sure she survived, but she was not a Jaeger and would have slowed him down as he tried to pursue the greater vampire threat. It frustrated him that the others did not seem to share his reasoning. Dorothea continued, “We have to find her to make sure she’s okay. And to make sure she’s not going to talk.”

“Miss Naoe is safe,” the Professor told them all sternly. “She’s home with her father in Setagaya. I was there when she arrived around eight thirty. She is...unwell, but unharmed.” The other members of the Anthropology Department did not know what that meant, but Willard did not elaborate. Instead, he ordered them, “She is not to be involved any further with anyone at the Department. For her own safety, I ask that you refrain from contacting her until further notice.”

“Professor, please forgive me, but I believe that Miss Naoe is already more involved than you realize,” Jiro said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out his personal cellphone. “Mr Jirov explained to us earlier that Miss Naoe had brought her phone to the shop that was attacked for repairs. Her phone was linked to the computer in my car for her convenience, however, I discovered last night that it has also been uploading her location to a private server, as well as recording audio and video information of her environment since the moment it passed into her hands.”

Willard inhaled sharply as he considered the implications of what Jiro had just told him. It would be foolish to assume that it was only the matter of malware or a hacker spying on Ryoko--her arrival at the Annex and her job working closely with members of a secret vampire-hunting cabal could not be a coincidence. The hard looks on the faces of his fellow Jaegers told him that they had also realized as much. He asked Jiro, “Who is receiving the data?”

Philip looked up from his laptop and answered, “I’ve already tried to figure that out. I was able to use the connection between the phone and the car to get copies of the recordings and GPS, but there’s no way for me to trace the server connection without the phone.” He glared at the Professor over the screen of his laptop and added angrily, “But I don't see why we don’t just grab the girl and ask her ourselves! I know that until now our business has strictly been vampires, but if she’s working with them we could be in serious--”

“Now, hold on a minute there, Philip,” Dorothea objected. “We can’t just assume that Miss Naoe even knew about the phone!”

Before Philip could retort, the Professor cut him off. “Dorothea is right. Before we draw any conclusions about Miss Naoe, we need to review all of the evidence. Do you know who gave her the phone, Akimoto?”

Jiro answered, “She received it from her employers at NTC.”

Willard nodded. “A telecommunications conglomerate would be more than capable of manufacturing phones and spyware, as well as the servers to harvest data undetected. This isn’t something we would be able to uncover easily, but we should begin with determining who at the NTC would want to spy on us, and why.”

“Sounds like a breeze,” Philip interjected sarcastically. “I’ll just pull up all of their employees’ LinkedIn profiles and see who has ‘vampire flunky’ written on their resume.”

Everyone but Yuliy, who had no idea what he was talking about, turned and glared at Philip. The Professor said, “I don’t think that will be necessary.” He did not offer any alternative ideas, either. Instead he told Philip, “You have Dorothea and Yuliy at your disposal. I know you will find something.”

Yuliy surprised them all by protesting, “Wait, Professor--what about Yevgraf?”

“This takes priority,” Willard answered. “I’m sorry Yuliy. We must act quickly, and I expect you to continue doing whatever you can to support your fellow Jaegers until the dangers have been dealt with.” A hardness entered his voice that did not go unnoticed by the rest of the team; Dorothea’s bright green eyes and Philip’s icy blue ones darted back and forth between the two men like they were watching a tennis match. Yuliy said nothing, and after several moments he walked stiffly past the Professor and out of the room.

Philip smirked. “All bark and no bite,” he said to no one in particular. 

Willard turned stiffly away from the others. “I’ll join you two in your work in a moment. Akimoto, would you step outside with me?”

Jiro nodded. Philip hunched over his laptop and Dorothea began folding up the map to make room for other materials as the two older men went out onto the front porch of the Annex. Insects circled the old, yellowing lights as the Professor produced a pouch of tobacco and began packing an old-fashioned pipe. They stood in genial silence as he lit the pipe and closed his eyes. Several moments passed, and then the Professor said, “I have a confession to make, Jiro. When I assigned you the task of becoming Miss Naoe’s driver, it was because I believed it would be easy for you to keep her out of our hair and consequently, out of trouble.” He raised the pipe to his lips, then lowered it again. “Unfortunately it seems to have only brought you deeper into danger, and for that I am terribly sorry.”

Akimoto’s bemused expression became one of mild surprise. Then he smiled gently and looked out over the dark, silent grounds of the university. “There is no need for you to apologize,” he said softly. “I knew the risks when I joined this Organization.”

“Knowing the risks and facing them are two different things,” Willard shook his head. “I thought I could look forward to a peaceful retirement. Listen, the timing is terrible, but I must leave Tokyo to rendezvous with a very elusive lead. If I do not meet with him now, we may not have another chance to learn what he knows about the enemy.”

Jiro nodded. “I’m sure the others will understand.”

Willard allowed himself a wry smile. “Perhaps all too well. I trust my team unconditionally, but I am worried that they will make some hasty decisions in my absence.” His smile lost its warmth as he told Jiro, “Dorothea is unquestionably in charge while I’m gone, but I humbly ask you to keep a particular eye on Yuliy. He is especially impatient when hunting the enemy, and rashness at this stage could put the others at great risk.”

The other man considered the Professor’s request somberly, then replied, “Of course, Willard. But I think you need to give yourself more credit. You taught him all he knows about being a Jaeger. It’s why he’s one of the best.”

Akimoto watched Willard run the mouthpiece of his pipe over his lower lip absently. “I will not deny that,” he finally replied. “But I worry about what he learned while he was out on his own. He may not see fit to follow my orders anymore, and I cannot allow him to endanger the others…”

Akimoto silenced Willard by reaching out and pushing the pipe gently away from his face with one hand, and cupping the back of the other man’s head with the other. Then he pressed a chaste but lingering kiss to his lips. “Again, you must give yourself more credit,” he said softly. “Yuliy returned to Japan because he knew he could trust you. Now you must trust him.”

Willard did not seem assured. He put his free hand on Akimoto’s lower back and they kissed again. It was too short, but Akimoto pulled away and made a face. “I cannot stand the taste of that pipe,” he reminded Willard. “And we have work to do.”

The Professor upended the mostly-unburnt tobacco over the side of the porch with a resigned sigh. “I hope that one day this work will run out.”

Jiro laughed. “Do you really? I think that the lack of excitement in a world without vampires might kill you.”

* * *

Saturday 12 August 3:00AM, undisclosed location on the Tokyo Waterfront

In the shadow of a passenger ship, a dozen oddly-dressed but rough-looking men dug noisily through cargo that lay abandoned under tarps at the end of the quay. They haphazardly tore through suitcases of sundries and briefcases of business material as if their task was to make as big a mess as possible. Standing off to one side and watching was the oddest-dressed one of them all, a middle aged man who wore a lacquered breastplate, cloth shoulder pads, and a samurai helmet, complete with a mane of shaggy hair and fearsome mask. Standing with his arms crossed and a long sword strapped to his back, he looked like a feudal warlord that had been transported through time to the modern era. The vandals he appeared to lead also wore elements of traditional Japanese warrior garb over seemingly ordinary street clothes, and a few were even armed with wakizashi or guns.

  
When they had thoroughly demolished the pyramid of luggage, the group let out a collective cry of outrage. “There’s nothing here, Boss!” One shouted. Others chorused restlessly, “You promised us evidence!”

  
Their leader, a man called Naotora, gnashed his teeth. Then a man up to his elbows in an unmarked duffel bag raised his arms over his head and shouted jubilantly. Clutched in his fists were what appeared to be fraudulent forms and illegal contracts all stamped with the name and logo of ALMA Electronics. The rest of the men cheered gleefully, and Naotora held out his hand to see what treasonous treasures they had uncovered. 

As the man stepped forward with his prize, the duffel bag in his arms exploded. Hot metal shards tore through fabric, flesh, and paper, fatally injuring several men and gravely wounding others. Naotora ducked and felt shrapnel graze his armor, and the heat of the bomb billow out over the dock. His men cried out in pain and fear, and Naotora staggered to his feet. Smoke stung his eyes and his ears rang, but in the scattered light of the fires that had caught on the wreckage around him he could see three figures approaching.

Naotora recognized the leading figure immediately. He was a middle-aged, well-appointed platinum-blonde Westerner with cold eyes, flanked by muscular but nondescript men who wore black suits and sunglasses. He walked with purpose through the carnage until he was only a few meters from Naotora, who snarled, “Kershner!”

The blonde man sneered. “Momosei. Did you really think we stupid enough to leave such a clumsy paper trail in this day and age?” His too-wide mouth split into a malicious grin. “Everything is in the cloud now! I’d say get with the times, but…” He paused theatrically as soot and scorched paper rained down around them. “I’m afraid the times have moved on without you.”

Surrounded by the stink of blood and burning plastic, Naotora was filled with rage. He screamed wordlessly at Kershner and lunged forward, raising a hand to draw the great sword from the sheath on his back. Kershner did not flinch, but one of his lackeys lashed out with one impossibly long, impossibly sharp claw that punched through Naotora’s breastplate and raked painfully over his chest. Naotora fell backward with a scream as the man advanced, growling and convulsing like a demon from an ancient story.

“These Hyakko Party rats have outlived their usefulness,” Kershner said dryly. “We’re going back, but you stay here and clean up this mess.” He gestured for his other bodyguard to follow and then added, “Make sure no one will ever recognize them.”  
The lackey hunched over, and his suit tore at the seams as the human body beneath it transformed into a beast before Naotora’s very eyes. The man shouted and went for his sword again, but the creature pounced on top of him and pinned both his arms to the ground. It braced its heavy body on one knee on his chest, but Naotora had enough breath left in him to howl in terror as it opened its slavering, spike-tooth mouth to swallow his head whole. 

Then the beast shrieked and reared back to its full eight-foot height. As it stood, Naotora could see that one of his wounded men had plunged a knife deep into its side, just below the jutting bones of its ribcage, and now hung on for dear life. Another crawled out from beneath a pile of rubble and fired at it several times with a handgun. A third, laying prone with half of his face burned black beside Naotora, put a hand on his fearless leader and urged him hoarsely, “You gotta get out of here, Boss! You have to get away from that thing!”

That thing had grabbed the man with the wakizashi and thrown him, screaming, thirty meters away into the wall of the lost-and-found kiosk, where he crumpled like a rag doll to the ground and did not move. Then the creature rounded on the man with the gun, barely reacting as bullets sank into its monstrously muscular chest. The man kept shooting until the magazine was empty, but still the beast pressed forward. 

Naotora’s fury at last outpaced his fear and he leapt to his feet. His vision was red and he felt as if his body was acting of its own accord as he unsheathed his sword and sprinted headlong at the devil in men’s clothing. The creature looked back just as Naotora drew close and slashed his blade across its back. Hot blood sprayed Naotora’s face and ruined armor, which only fed his adrenaline. His arms kept swinging as the monster turned, and then his sword sliced into the marginally softer skin of its throat. The creature’s wrathful screams became choking gurgles and it fell to its knees, clawing at its own neck. Then another terrible transformation took hold as it collapsed: its dark skin cracked and its huge mass crumbled into hot ash that blew into Naotora’s wide-open eyes and gasping mouth, until nothing remained except for a few scraps of suit and bent sunglasses.

Naotora heard his sword clatter to the ground before he felt his hands drop it, then sank to his knees.  
The survivors of the explosion and the subsequent battle struggled to gather around him. No private security or civil authorities had arrived to investigate the commotion of the fight or the fires that still burned at the end of the wharf, but Naotora began to realize that it would be a simple matter for a powerful man like Kershner to cover up an incident, especially if he believed his pet monster could finish off the Hyakko Party unopposed.

But it hadn’t finished them off. Naotora and his compatriots had defeated that...thing...and now it was their duty to warn others. They had known that ALMA and its Western connections were a threat to Japan and the traditions that had protected it in the past, but Naotora would never have imagined that an electronics manufacturer had brought literal demons to their nation’s shores. And with the beast disintegrated, they had no proof that it had existed at all.

He needed to collect the survivors and get the hell out before they could plan their next move. As Naotaro bent to pick up his sword, his foot kicked a piece of plastic, and he saw that Kershner’s monster had dropped a key card that had been clipped to his jacket when he’d shed his human skin. It had a magnetic strip down one side and a photo on the other, as well as the name of the company where the vile beast had been employed: Naoe Telecommunications. Quickly, Naotaro stuffed the card into his pocket and felt his adrenaline return. The bastard Kershner thought he had cut the Hyakko Party out for good, but he had left his rear guard wide open.


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Saturday 12 August 12:30 PM, Setagaya

When Ryoko at last woke up, she first became aware of her pounding headache, and then the nausea that rolled up from her stomach to the backs of her eyes like waves on a restless sea. She groaned and reached out a hand from beneath her blankets for her phone to check the time, but her fingers were bound together by some kind of tape. A sudden panic cut through her discomfort and her eyes flew open, but she was still much too ill to sit up.

  
As her eyes adjusted to the low light she recognized the ceiling of her bedroom—but not the one in her apartment in Machida. She was in her childhood room in her father’s home, in her bed beneath the quilt her mother had made shortly before she died. It looked just as she remembered: the floral-pattern furniture and framed photographs were not a hair out of place, and her athletic awards had all been painstakingly dusted during the time she had been gone. She raised her hands to her face and saw that her palms and fingers had been bandaged, as if she had just come home from a kendo tournament with freshly broken blisters. For a few feverish seconds, Ryoko thought that the last few years had somehow been a dream, and that she was still a high schooler preparing for college and arguing with her father about trivial things, like the length of her skirt or not to eat ice cream before dinner. Then she lowered her hands and touched the cool, smooth screen of her cellphone under her pillow and the reality came crawling back. She was a gainfully employed adult who made adult decisions and suffered adult consequences—but what she couldn’t remember was how exactly she had gotten there.

  
The last thing she could recall was sitting down to interview Dorothea, and then joining her and Yuliy for lunch. She could not remember any further because her head and hands began to throb, and she sank back into her pillow with a moan. Then there was the softest of knocks on her bedroom door, and it opened wide enough for a kind brown eye to peer through.

  
“Miss Naoe?” Asked Tomoko gently. “Are you awake? Can I get you anything?”

  
Ryoko considered asking Tomoko to put her out of her misery, but decided against it. Instead she asked for aspirin and seltzer, and then began the painful process of getting up out of bed.

  
She had gone to bed wearing a set of pajamas she hadn’t seen since high school, and her clothes from the day before were hanging on the back of her desk chair. While she knew they had been laundered, Ryoko felt bad for wearing them two days in a row. After she had dressed she made her bed, and checked the time. Her heart sank; it was nearly one in the afternoon. What had happened to her yesterday?

  
Her head continued to ache, making it difficult for Ryoko to concentrate. Maybe her father could tell her. She went downstairs to meet Tomoko in the smaller of the house’s two dining rooms where the staff had already laid out lunch. Before Tomoko left, Ryoko asked if her father was still home and the housekeeper shook her head.

  
“Your father went out this morning,” Tomoko explained. “After Doctor Hanada attended to you, they left for a round of golf. As I understand it, the Baron has several lunch meetings this afternoon as well.”

  
Ryoko was careful not to let the disappointment show on her face at Tomoko’s answer, and a small internal voice berated her for expecting any less from her chronically overbooked father. At least he had been worried enough about her to call for a doctor…

  
“Wait!” Ryoko’s voice rose and her cheeks flushed as she registered what Tomoko had said. “He called Doctor Hanada?” Doctor Hanada Kisuke had been her pediatrician, as well as a longtime family friend of the Naoes. It seemed a little weird to still be seeing him as a medical professional now that she was a grown woman, but perhaps he had treated on such short notice her as a favor to her father. Still, she was embarrassed by the thought. “Was I really so bad that it required a house call?”

  
Tomoko nodded emphatically. “Why, yes, Miss Naoe. We were all very concerned for you last night.” She smiled genially. “Then Miss Agatha advised your father on how to look after you and we knew you would be all right.”

  
Ryoko’s right hand unconsciously went to her phone in her pocket as she thought, Miss Agatha? She told Tomoko, “Wow. I guess that woman really helps my father with everything.” She asked warily, “Did Doctor Hanada say what was wrong with me?”

  
Sympathetically, Tomoko told her, “It was only exhaustion. The Doctor recommends rest, and so your father has said you are permitted to stay for as long as you need to recover.”

  
Permitted? Ryoko’s blood froze. Since when did she need permission to stay in her own home? Oblivious, Tomoko excused herself. Ryoko ate slowly with her clumsy, bandaged hands. She felt alone in the big, silent house, and thought that things really had not changed at all since she’d left for university. She had come back a different person--more experienced, more mature--but her father, his business, and his life remained the same. There was room for her only when it was convenient.

  
Ryoko’s aches and nausea had faded, but after struggling for several minutes she had lost her appetite. She left the dining room and strode into the front hall, wondering if she should just leave now despite Doctor Hanada’s advice. He hadn’t even spoken to Ryoko herself--just her father, the two men making decisions about her life as if she were still a child. Suddenly, she was furious, and her frozen blood began to boil.

  
Ryoko pulled out her phone to call for a cab back to Mashida. Then she heard a door open upstairs, and Tomoko’s footsteps coming closer. For some reason, Ryoko really did not want Tomoko to know that she was leaving, and she quickly darted across the hall to duck into her father's favorite parlor. She stood with her back pressed against the door, listening for Tomoko to pass by, and her eyes fell on the beautiful black butsudan across the room.

  
Her anger faded, and Ryoko put her phone away. Guiltily, she realized she had been so quick to give in to her ego that she had nearly left without saying anything to her mother.

  
Ryoko cautiously approached the butsudan and was disheartened to see that while it was still dusted and polished by the staff, her father had not been leaving offerings or burning incense in her absence. It wouldn’t make any sense for Ryoko to do it right before she was about to leave the house either, but she could at least take a moment to make sure everything was in order.

  
She strode businesslike to the front of the butsudan and pulled the doors open as swiftly as she pulled off a bandage. Inside of the cabinet, framed photographs of her deceased family lined the bottom shelf, along with an empty flower vase and inscribed tablets. Above them, behind a set of inlaid inner doors would be a figure of the bodhisattva Fugen seated on a white elephant. The butsudan had been her father’s last gift to his wife, who had possessed a passion for preserving Japanese art and culture up until her death; now it sat neglected as a monument to his misery.

  
Ryoko sighed heavily, quelling her frustration and putting on a smile for her mother. It always hurt to see her mother’s much younger face beside those of her grandparents and great-grandparents, who had defied adversity and lived full, long lives. She picked out Rei’s photo in its familiar dark frame and felt something fall to the floor; she knelt before the butsudan and found a small velvet ring box that had been hidden behind her mother’s picture. Had it always been in there? She could not remember. Was it another precious artifact her father had bought for her mother and then when it became too painful to remember, pushed it unceremoniously out of sight? Ryoko thought she was pretty familiar with her family’s extensive catalogue of historical objects, but she could not recall there ever being a ring…

  
Ryoko set down her mother’s picture so she could use both hands to pry the jewelry box open. To her surprise, there was not a ring inside but a black pearl about the size of a ten yen coin. Its color was much darker than any natural or artificial pearl she had ever seen, and she would be surprised if anything that big wasn’t grown in a lab. It didn’t answer her questions about where it came from, either; her mother had not had any special interest in pearls. Ryoko shrugged, supposing that it was an offering for a different relative, and tucked it back on the shelf.

  
Then she raised her mother’s photo with both hands and studied her demure expression for a moment before saying aloud, “Good morning, mom. I mean, good afternoon. I slept in late.”

  
Ryoko grimaced as she thought about how her mother would never have left her bedside to play golf if her daughter had turned up ill in the middle of the night. Then she rolled her eyes. “I think Dad is avoiding me. I don't know how he thinks he’s going to get away with it, though, now that I’m his employee.” She wondered how her mother would feel about Ryoko’s job, and so she explained, “I’m steward of a fund that’s been named after you. It was awarded to the Anthropology Department at this tiny university in Machida, and between you and me, I think they could really use the money.”

  
She hesitated, as uncertain now as she had been two days ago about the Department’s worthiness of the Rei Saito Fund. Sure, the Annex could use a remodeling, but between the enigmatic Dorothea, prickly Philip, and the absentee Professor Willard, she wasn't sure if the Department was the bastion of cultural appreciation that her mother would have envisioned for her legacy. “They’re a little odd, though,” she added. “It’s almost like they don’t want me to be there. It’s not like I get in the way or anything…”

  
Ryoko allowed herself to sigh, resigning herself to rejection at every turn. “It’s going to be fine. I’m really just supposed to be auditing them to make sure they’re not, like, wanted criminals.” She inhaled, determined to persevere through what would surely be an awkward week at the Annex as she tried to verify information before Agatha’s Friday deadline. Then Ryoko set down her mother’s picture and promised, “Okay, until next time. I’ll be back soon.”

  
She checked that everything was back in its proper place, then closed up the butsudan. There was no sign of Tomoko when Ryoko stuck her head out of the parlor, and she took it as an opportunity to sneak out the front door. She crept quickly but quietly down the gravel driveway, then burst out laughing when she reached the sidewalk.

  
She couldn’t believe that at twenty-two years old she was still disobeying her doctor’s orders and sneaking out of her father's house. Well, if she was going to make the effort, she should at least enjoy it; walking a route she had memorized since childhood, Ryoko went to buy herself a treat at her favorite ice cream shop. She was relieved that it was still there, and had even gotten a modern update, replacing its surly teenage waitstaff with automated kiosks and boasting a variety of picturesque signature sundaes. When she had finished eating, she went to the chain book shop next door and browsed for an hour. Her unbearable headache from that morning was just a faded memory, at least until four-thirty when her father called.  
Ryoko let it go to voicemail, then decided it was time to head back to her apartment in Machida. She thought about calling Akimoto, but then remembered that he worked for NTC and probably spied on her for her dad, anyway. Instead, she opted to flag down a regular cab and charge it to her company card. She spent the ride silently scrolling through her social media, sharing pictures of her ice cream alongside cheerful captions to indicate that she was adjusting well to her new job in Tokyo. By the time they had reached Mashida, a few dozen of her classmates from Kansai University had commented congratulations, and Ryoko smiled smugly to herself. She didn’t need her father’s help to succeed out in the real world. She could handle it just fine on her own.

* * *

Monday 14 August, 6:30 AM, Annex

After two days and nights of slouching in front of his computer and pounding energy drinks, Philip had stacks of data to share with the team, including a troubling lead on the ship Yuliy had seen in Shanghai.

  
Dorothea put on the kettle to make coffee while Yuliy watched Philip lay papers across the kitchen table. There were scans of print newspaper articles in several languages regarding the great ocean liner Byzantium. Many of the articles were accompanied by photographs, though the ship in its prime was almost unrecognizable as the derelict Yuliy had seen Mikhail destroy. In addition to the articles were deeds of ownership, receipts of sale, and a stack of bills from the Shanghai Port Authority for storage and operating rights, heavily censored by thick black bars over the names of the Byzantium’s owners and addresses. Once it was laid out, Philip stood back from the table with his arms folded. “You’re welcome,” he announced to the room, swaying on his feet.

  
Yuliy took it all in silently and then said, “I’m not sure what all of this means.”

  
“It means that the ship you sank in Shanghai has had a long and interesting history,” Dorothea explained as she pulled the whistling kettle off the stove and began to prepare cups of coffee for herself and Philip. “She was built in the late sixties in Great Britain as a luxury passenger ship, but then she was outfitted for military use during the Falklands War. She saw some action, but after the war it was converted back and changed hands pretty frequently over the years.” She hesitated, then said, “The Organization has actually seen that ship before, here in Japan.”

  
Dorothea came to the table and handed one mug to Philip. Then she lifted up one of the newspaper articles and offered it to Yuliy. The headlining story was the bust of an international art smuggling ring that had been ferrying historical artifacts in and out of Tokyo aboard passenger ships, including the Byzantium. “It was operating under a different name then, and it was actually impounded by the Japanese government as they investigated the owners’ involvement in the crimes. It looks like they were paid off and the ship was released… Just to rot in Shanghai until you found it.”

  
Yuliy took a closer look at the article Dorothea had singled out, and compared the photos of the two ships. They were identical, and Yuliy had no reason to doubt Dorothea’s word. The date on the newspaper caught his eye, and he said, his tone slightly surprised, “This is the Akasaka case.”

  
Dorothea nodded. Philip took a gulp of hot coffee and asked, “The who now?”

  
“This is the case that brought the Organization to Japan three years ago,” Dorothea told him. “A professor named Akasaka Mamoru was receiving the shipments on the Byzantium for the smugglers in Japan. He was apprehended by the Organization and confessed to working for the Enemy. When the job was done, Z assigned our Professor to oversee operations in East Asia. You know what happened after that.” She ended with a smile and a vague hand flourish.

  
“That must have been when you went on your solo tour,” Philip said, turning toward Yuliy again. “The most recent owner of the Byzantium was some bankrupt cruise company. I followed the trail through a couple Eastern European banks, conglomerations, and stewardships until I found a very interesting name. Kershner.”

Yuliy’s impassive expression said it all. The name meant nothing to him.

“Ugh, you must be living under a serious rock!” Philip exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air and splattering coffee across the table. “Jared Kershner is the CEO of ALMA Technologies, one of the world’s leading tech manufacturers and the latest acquisition of Naoe Telecommunications. I’m still waiting for a packet from V, but I’m pretty sure he’s also a known Royal Vampire.” His growing excitement, his disheveled hair, and dark bags beneath his eyes gave Philip an increasingly manic appearance as he exclaimed, “Don’t you see? This is the link we’ve been looking for! That girl isn’t a corporate spy, she’s a spy for the Enemy!”

Yuliy’s brow furrowed as he considered the grainy photos of the ship. Unbidden, his brother’s orders to forget about his life as a Jaeger passed through his mind. He had believed that his meeting with Mikhail had been a dead end and that he would have to wait a long time to meet his brother again. Instead, he had uncovered the fuzzy edges of an enemy plot in Tokyo. Dorothea went on to hypothesize that if Philip’s identification proved true, Kershner had been the one to give the order to kill the phone technicians in Akihabara. She sighed and said, “I really wish the Professor wasn’t out of town right now. We really can’t sit on this information. Whatever Kershner is up to, he has to be stopped.”

  
“Can’t you reach the Professor?” Philip asked. “I bet Akimoto’s been in contact with him all this time. Ask him.”

  
“I’ll do that,” Dorothea agreed. “I have some real concerns. Three years ago they were trying to bring the enemy into Japan. It looks like they succeeded, right under our noses. Now we just have to figure out what their next move will be.”

  
Yuliy’s fists clenched at his sides. As a Jaeger he had fought against the enemy’s influence in the dark corners of the globe, but Kershner was confident enough to become a wealthy and well-known public figure. The extent of his reach in Tokyo was unclear, but it made Yuliy’s blood run cold with fear, and then boil over with rage.

  
“How could you let this happen?” Yuliy demanded suddenly. Dorothea and Philip both responded with open-mouthed stares. Philip began to ask what he meant, but Yuliy shouted over him, “How could you let the Enemy grow this powerful right under your nose?” His wrathful tone was suspicious of Dorothea, who answered coldly.

  
“If only I knew, then I could tell you, Yuliy,” she said. “But now is not the time to let our imaginations get the better of us. We’ve discovered the foxes in the henhouse, now we can work together to get them out…” She turned toward the young man beside her, who was trembling with anger at Yuliy’s unspoken accusations. She snapped at him to get his attention. “Philip! How much have you got on ALMA?”

  
“Enough to know they’re bad news,” Philip spat back. “After the acquisition they merged offices with the NTC in the Shiodome City Center. They’ve got administrative offices on the upper floors and some R’n’D in the basement. Lots of investors’ cash flowing in, but not a lot coming out, and I can’t find anything detailed online about internal developments. They installed some fast wifi in Minato as some sort of publicity stunt, but that’s it.” He added, “Our guy Kershner travels a lot but he’s in town right now--don’t know for how long though. Maybe Miss Naoe can ask around for us.”

  
“I don’t think we need to worry about Miss Naoe anymore,” Dorothea said slowly. She was almost finished with her report on the Akihabara attack to V, who would get back to them with a strategy for damage control. Enemy incursions rarely resulted in new recruits, so Miss Naoe would probably be offered a tidy sum in exchange for her silence. “I think our next step should be to evacuate the Annex. We have a few safe houses outside of Tokyo that haven’t been compromised. The enemy hasn’t come after us yet, but we’re on borrowed time.”

  
She set her coffee down and marched back upstairs to start packing. Philip grumbled under his breath and followed, leaving his papers on the table for Yuliy to study thoughtfully before he started cleaning up.

* * *

Midnight, outside of Borsa, Romania

A shining black sedan drove speedily along the forest roads of Romania like an oversized beetle, paying little heed to the speed limit signs or mounted warnings of animal crossings. As it climbed up the foothills of the Rodna mountains, the car passed exits for historic attractions and celebrated hiking trails--inviting signs to holiday visitors, but an unhappy omen to the long-lived residents. Centuries ago, the people of this place would not dare to enter the woods out of fear of the dark and dangerous things that lurked just out of sight. Now, the secret corners of the world were shrinking faster than the timeless evils that lived in them could adapt.

  
The car turned onto an unmarked road that would not have appeared to an ordinary mortal driver. Overhead, ancient trees clasped their branches together to form an impenetrable canopy, casting the world beneath them into an eternal twilight. Then abruptly the woods fell away to reveal a high, iron-spiked stone wall that guarded an indisputably old castle. Its pointy-topped turrets and crumbling crenellations would not have been out of place on the cover of a pulp horror novel. Through the wrought-iron gate, the castle’s glass windows could be seen reflecting the red and orange sky, creating the illusion of a fire roaring through its halls. The car’s silent passenger knew it was only wishful thinking, and that inside he would find the usual gloom that the castle’s denizens preferred.

  
The gates slowly opened just wide enough for the car to pass through, and it came to a stop before the huge wooden door that marked the castle’s main entrance. The passenger, a dead man known in life as Mikhail Jirov, stepped out. Then the great, hulking brute of a vampire with his face half hidden behind a fringe of dull red hair that had been driving the car stepped up behind him and followed Mikhail very closely into the castle.

  
The entrance hall was a cavernous room lit from above by a flickering, soot-caked chandelier and widely spaced electric wall sconces. Wind moaned through the murky corridors and stirred the cobwebs in the corners as Mikhail and his chaperone walked through the castle that had become a crypt. They passed a few rooms that were occupied by small groups of well-dressed vampires sulking about until they saw Mikhail; then their lifeless red eyes lit up with interest, and their lips curled into cruel, sharp-toothed smiles. He did not acknowledge them.

  
Suddenly shrill, girlish voices filled the castle with shouts of glee as two small childlike bloodsuckers came running down one hall toward Mikhail. “Misha!” They cried in unison as they danced circles around him. One scolded him playfully, “You’re finally back! We knew you couldn't stay away!”

  
Mikhail scowled but did not speak to the young vampires. Larissa and Tamara were nearly identical except for small quirks in the way that they dressed and did their hair. Though they exhibited all of the same sadistic tendencies as their elders, the twins had not yet come into their own as Royal vampires--it appeared to Mikhail that being born dead had stunted their growth both physically and mentally. They had tormented him in the special way that only twelve-year-olds could for over a decade, and they were not going to stop any time soon.

  
“I finally got to the final boss in my mobile game,” Larissa told him, grabbing Mikhail’s sleeve. “But it’s too hard! Misha, can you beat him for me?” She held a smart phone up in her other hand and shook it insistently.

  
Tamara scoffed, “Misha doesn’t want to play your dumb baby games, Larissa.” She seized Mikhail’s other hand with both of hers and pleaded, “Come into town with me tonight instead! I’m so hungry, and Master Yevgraf won’t let us out without a grown-up!”

  
Disgusted, Mikhail yanked himself free of their small, grasping hands and snarled, “Go away!” He stopped in front of another door, nearly as large as the castle’s entrance, and pushed it open roughly. The door swung inward with a groan that echoed over the walls of the repurposed throne room. Against the wall opposite the door was a raised dais, illuminated from behind by an enormous stained-glass window. A handful of Royal vampire elders, easily mistaken for stalactites, hung upside-down from the ceiling before the window. Even after years of existing among their ranks, Mikhail understood very little about the complex social structures of the vampires. The frail and immobile elders still somehow commanded the respect and obedience of the younger, stronger, and more numerous brood--well, most of them, at any rate.

  
Mikhail could see a sickeningly familiar silhouette posed beneath the elders, face turned up impetuously as he argued his case. “It is our birthright,” said the penitent angrily. “It is a foundation upon which we can build our future.”

  
“Still you cling to the scraps left behind by a pathetic pack of filthy wolves,” came a dry and hollow-sounding voice from the cluster of dangling undead. “What you seek exists only in fairy tales, Yevgraf.”

“At least I seek something!” Yevgraf challenged. “Or would you have me stand idly by as the last embers of our race are snuffed out?”

“If our time upon this world is at an end, so be it,” said the ugly old vampire. Mikhail guessed that he had not gone beyond the castle walls in several centuries.

“You have lost all of your pride,” Yevgraf sneered. “If you wish to perish, then perish here alone!”

He turned away from the elders who barked and snapped at his arrogance but did nothing at all to stop him. As he descended the dais and walked toward the door, Yevgraf’s gaze fell on Mikhail, and his already sour expression only twisted further. He stepped out into the corridor and said coolly, “I have missed you, Mikhail.”

“Getting lonely without me?” Mikhail responded, just as coldly. The twins giggled. The driver said nothing.

Yevgraf brushed by Mikhail and the rest of his entourage, assuming correctly that the others would fall into step behind him.

Yevgraf continued, “You test my patience by staying away for so long. What kept you in Shanghai, I wonder?”

“All of the pretty Shanghai girls,” Mikhail answered insincerely. Larissa and Tamara shrieked, scandalized, as Yevgraf shot Mikhail a dirty look over his shoulder. They left the corridor with the throne room and entered a huge split-level library. The driver waited by the door, and the twins made bee lines for a pair of desks outfitted with multiple high-end computers and monitors. The too-bright light from the monitors made their deathly pale skin glow. Yevgraf sank into a wide leather couch atop a rich fur throw, his ruby-red eyes watching Mikhail as the other man stood before him and scowled. Mikhail asked, “What matter was so urgent that you had to drag me back to this dump?”

  
“You are bold,” Yevgraf drawled. “Bold enough to fire your weapon on your fellow vampires.”

  
Mikhail’s eyes narrowed and he tilted his head back to looked down his nose at Yevgraf, but he did not dare say anything.  
“Do not get me wrong,” Yevgraf continued. “I could not care less about Kershner’s schemes. His constant efforts to manipulate and subjugate mankind at their level are a waste of time. I only sent you to Shanghai to make sure that he did not act carelessly and expose us.” He paused pointedly. “He failed. We are fortunate that our enemies have been too incompetent to uncover his real plans. Especially since you explicitly disobeyed my orders to destroy a Jaeger on sight.”

  
Mikhail clenched his jaw and glanced in the direction of the door. He might have stood a chance against Yevgraf’s loyal thug, but there was no way he could fend off an entire castle full of Royals. They would tear him apart like a corpse beneath the beaks of carrion birds.

  
As if he could read Mikhail’s mind, Yevgraf assured him, “Stop fretting. I won’t kill you for your transgression. You are still useful to me.” He beckoned to Larissa, who bounced onto the couch with a tablet in her small and sharply manicured hands. On the screen was a video recorded by a security camera overlooking a wharf, and despite the darkness and low-quality images, Mikhail recognized the Shanghai port where he had encountered his younger brother Yuliy.

“We know you destroyed the other security cameras,” Larissa sang, kicking her feet with excitement. “But you missed my drone!”

  
She increased the speed of the video, playing through Yuliy’s fight with the vampire guards and Mikhail’s merciless sniping of Kershner’s snarling slaves. Yuliy briefly disappeared from view, and then Mikhail saw himself fleeing the scene as the crane dropped its load and sank the rusted boat. He could not stop from sucking in a breath as he watched Yuliy fall to the ground and then eventually stand back up. After he collected his broken weapon, Yuliy jogged unsteadily out of the fenced-in area, passing by the camera one final time.

  
“Hmmm,” Yevgraf raised a hand to signal for Larissa to stop. “Who is he, I wonder?”

  
“He’s just another damn Jaeger,” Mikhail answered, though the question had clearly been rhetorical. “A lucky one if he lived after a fall like that. I didn’t know he survived.”

  
“Hmmm,” Larissa imitated Yevgraf and ignored Mikhail. She rewound the video to a frame where Yuliy’s face was visible and tapped her nails across the tablet’s smooth screen. “Let’s zoom in here...and...enhance!” She magnified Yuliy’s face and grinned. “He’s pretty cute for a stinky Jaeger.”

  
Yevgraf tilted his head to one side and studied the image. “There is something familiar about this one, but I cannot place it.” However, his mocking tone told Mikhail that he had his suspicions. “If you see him again, Mikhail, I expect you to obey your orders.”

  
His unwilling underling only shrugged and said doubtfully, “If I see him again.”

  
With his lips spread wide in another feral smile, Yevgraf replied, “It could be more likely than you think. Kershner has uncovered a rat’s nest in Tokyo. Even more interestingly, he has kept them a secret from me. Go there and prove to me that you can still follow orders by figuring out what he’s up to, and then destroy the Jaegers.” His red eyes gleamed as if lit from within, and an unspoken threat passed between the two men. Larissa hugged the tablet to herself and ran back to join her sister at their desks. Tamara had busied herself with computer games, and the two began to bicker as if the deadly quarrel between the vampires and Jaegers meant nothing to them.

  
Mikhail scoffed. “Does this mean you’ve given up on your treasure hunt?”

As Mikhail expected, Yevgraf’s answer was elusive. “Far from it, my pet. I expect you to find an interesting trail of breadcrumbs while you’re in Japan. And remember, the girls and I will be watching.”

* * *

Monday 14 August 9:00 AM, Machida

Ryoko opted to walk to Taijin University from her apartment so that she could enjoy some fresh air before she had to work inside of the stuffy Annex all day. Her hands were sore and sported a few bandages, but she had nothing to carry since she had left all of her bags at work on Friday. She still held a grudge against her father, which meant she was also forced to avoid Akimoto’s convenient car service by proxy, but the heat and high humidity very nearly changed her mind.

  
The forecast had called for cloudy skies with high humidity, and the Department had left the front door open to what little breeze carried across the University’s grounds. Ryoko was shocked to find the front hall of the Annex crowded with boxes and office equipment, and stood stupefied in front of a stack of files as loud steps approached from somewhere upstairs. Philip and Yuliy appeared, carrying instrument cases over their shoulders. They started marching down the stairs, then froze at the sight of Ryoko. Confused silence hung in the air for several moments before Philip leapt back up the stairs, two steps at a time, calling for Dorothea to come quickly. Ryoko stared after him, then glanced at Yuliy for an explanation.

  
He was silent, watching her with wide, too-blue eyes that slid from her face to her bandaged hands folded in front of her. Then Philip reappeared with Dorothea right behind him and Ryoko felt like she was standing before the firing squad. Finally she nodded her head stiffly and said, “Good morning, everyone.”

  
Dorothea smiled wide and traipsed down the stairs to say, “Ryoko! It’s good to see you.” She paused and asked, “Are you, uh, are you alright?”

Ryoko flushed with embarrassment, assuming Dorothea was referring to her illness on Friday. “Oh, yes, I’m fine, thank you,” she said quickly. She looked pointedly at the boxes on the floor. “Are you… That is, am I interrupting something?”

  
Dorothea glanced at the clutter and back at Ryoko. “Oh, this? Just some spring cleaning.”

  
Yuliy heard Philip mutter, “It’s August,” under his breath.

  
“I was just...inspired by what you accomplished in Fallon’s office that I thought the whole Annex could use an overhaul,” Dorothea said, then stepped uncomfortably close to Ryoko and peered intently into the younger woman’s face. Quietly, she asked, “Are you sure you’re okay? There isn’t anything you want to talk about?”

  
Ryoko was unsettled by Dorothea’s intense observation, but forced herself to remain polite. “It really was just some food poisoning, I’m fine,” she stammered. “Please excuse me, I must get to work.” She turned into Fallon’s office and closed the door firmly behind her. She leaned back against it for a moment to try to puzzle out Dorothea’s strange behavior, and heard her ask the boys to join her in her office upstairs. Ryoko tried once more to remember what had happened on Friday but it only made her head hurt, so she sat down at the desk and tried to figure out where she had left off in the box of tax documents.

  
Philip rushed past Yuliy, who lingered at the top of the stairs and stared at the office door as if he was trying to see through it. The sight of Ryoko had inspired a few unexpected emotions, like confusion, anger, and regret that he could not immediately place. Then he realized the last time he had seen her, Ryoko had been begging for his help after an unexplained monster attack and he had run away. On Friday it had seemed like the right thing to do. Now he was not so sure.

  
Dorothea climbed the stairs and paused as she drew even with Yuliy. “We should find out why she’s here,” he said, and started to take a step down. Dorothea put a hand on his shoulder to stop him and shook her head. She steered him to her office where Philip was waiting with his arms crossed and foot tapping impatiently.

  
Yuliy closed the door and set his instrument case upright on the floor. Philip exclaimed, “What the hell is she doing here?”  
“Keep it down!” Dorothea hissed, bracing herself against her desk and glowering at Philip beneath knitted black brows. “Your guess is as good as mine. Well, no scratch that. My guess is probably a little better.”

  
“What does that even mean?” Philip groaned, falling into one of the chairs in front of Dorothea’s desk.

  
“We already know that Miss Naoe was sent to work here by the enemy,” Dorothea began slowly. “Without her knowledge, mind you! Then she was attacked in order to cover up the spyware they planted in her phone. In fact, if you hadn’t been there, Yuliy…” She stopped, her eyes wide, and she stood up straight. “That must be it. They didn’t know you were there.”  
Yuliy frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  
“Friday at the repair shop,” Dorothea explained. “You killed the vampires and fled the scene which left Ryoko as the only witness. The police would have picked her up, but I… I’d bet anything that the Enemy got a hold of her and wiped her memory.”

  
“Wiped her memory?” Philip asked incredulously. “You sound like an internet conspiracy theorist. She could just be pretending like nothing happened.”

  
“She’s not stupid,” Dorothea drawled. “And she knows that wouldn’t fool us. Yuliy was there, but if our enemies didn’t know that, they would have wiped her memory and considered their asses covered.”

  
“Still sounds like science fiction,” Philip said reluctantly. He crossed his legs and kicked one foot restlessly.

  
“You’re a Jaeger and you’re saying that the enemy’s magic powers are unrealistic?” Dorothea pounded one fist on the table, startling Philip and Yuliy. “I say it because I’ve seen it before. Royal Vampires that can hypnotize their victims and then they can order them to do almost anything--to hide evidence, or to protect them, or even to kill. Then when it’s over, they’ve forgotten everything, and the vampires get what they want without ever getting their hands dirty.” She clenched her jaw, visibly upset, but pushed on. “I’ve seen the power of commands like that firsthand. We can test my theory but I don’t think anything else explains why she came back like nothing happened.”

  
“And how do you expect us to test it?” Philip demanded, sitting up and leaning forward to challenge her. “Go downstairs and ask her, ‘hey, do you remember the vicious vampire attack you witnessed last weekend?’ Kind of goes against the point, don’t you think?”

  
Dorothea folded her hands and pressed them her lips as she considered Philip’s question. Then she heard her office door open and watched Yuliy exit without another word.

  
Yuliy heard Dorothea call after him, but he went quickly down the stairs and walked into Fallon’s office without pausing to gather his thoughts. Ryoko stood beside the desk, feeding paper from a cardboard box into a scanner and then into a neat pile beside her laptop. She looked up when he walked in, and watched him with wide brown eyes. Yuliy searched her face for the fear he had seen at the shop, but he could only detect confusion as he continued to stare at her intently without saying anything. After half a minute had passed, Ryoko cleared her throat and asked, “Can I help you?”

  
Yuliy was unsure. Interrogation had never been a large part of his field work. If he needed answers but could not sniff it out on his own, he knew who to ask for leads. This, however, was different from any hunt he had ever been on in his years as a Jaeger. Instead of facing off with a dangerous, bloodthirsty vampire, he was talking to an ordinary woman who believed that he was an ordinary man. He said, “Yes. I came to see how you were feeling.”

  
Ryoko flushed. She was surprised that of all of the people at the Anthropology department, it was Yuliy who had come to check in on her. Perhaps Dorothea had put him up to it. The persistent inquiries of the Department into her health was not comforting but embarrassing to Ryoko, and she feared that talking about it would bring on that atrocious headache again. She could not stop herself from snapping, “I said I was fine!”

  
Yuliy’s mouth opened slightly, then closed. Ryoko’s blush deepened and she looked away from him into the cardboard box. “I’m sorry! I know you were just being kind and I shouldn’t have snapped at you, but I’m really busy right now!” She picked up a folder full of files in both hands and banged them abruptly against the table to straighten the pages out. One particularly sharp sheet sliced into the tender skin of her right palm and she dropped the entire stack with a hiss of pain.

  
Yuliy came forward and knelt on the floor beside her to help her gather up the pages. Even as she hugged her stinging palm to her chest, Ryoko had the clarity of mind to remind him to try and keep them in order, but he didn’t know what order they had been to begin with. When they had gathered the folder and its contents into a haphazard pile on the desk, Yuliy asked, “What happened to your hands?”

  
He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear what Ryoko would say if she had been forced to forget the truth. She extended her hands shyly, palm-up to show him where she had scraped the skin sometime after she had become ill on Friday. “It was just a little fall,” she said lightly. “It’s nothing.”

  
Yuliy wrapped a hand around one of her wrists and raised it higher so that he could take a closer look. Ryoko felt her cheeks grow hot, and she laughed nervously.

  
“You know, I used to be a lot tougher than this,” she said, quickly and dismissively self-deprecating. “I practiced kenjutsu every day until I graduated high school. You wouldn't believe what I had to do to lose the calluses…”

  
She trailed off and looked up to see if Yuliy was even listening. He was. With those incredible blue eyes focused solemnly on her face, Ryoko felt her breath catch expectantly in her chest. Yuliy said, “I have something that will help.” Then he dropped her hands and left the room.

  
Ryoko looked around for a hidden camera or some other sign that she was being pranked. Then she sighed, chiding herself for leaping to such wild conclusions. Still, when Yuliy came back she would have to tell him that she was too busy to flirt right now. Her mind made up, Ryoko started to gingerly rearrange the pages back into their proper order.

  
When Yuliy climbed the stairs he found Dorothea and Philip peering at him from a crack in the door to her office. He told them, “You were right. She doesn’t remember what happened.”

  
“What?” They both exclaimed, the shock plain on their faces.

  
Dorothea opened the door wider and ushered Yuliy inside. “How can you know that for sure?”

  
“She repeated something I already heard her say on Friday,” Yuliy said. “And I couldn’t see it in her eyes.”

  
“Couldn’t see what?” Dorothea asked curiously.

  
Yuliy could not tell Dorothea what his brother had said to him in Shanghai. Instead he could only say enigmatically, “What happens to people after they see a vampire up close.”

  
Philip scowled at Yuliy, one arm slung over the back of the chair as he scrutinized the other Jaeger suspiciously. “You sound like you’re the one getting pretty close. Do we have to worry about you defecting to the other side?”

  
Yuliy turned away and walked out of the office while Dorothea scolded Philip for his inappropriate comments. Yuliy went into his room and brought his bag out from under the bed. He rummaged through it for a moment before he pulled out what he was looking for and headed downstairs once again. As he passed the office, he could hear Dorothea and Philip arguing but he did not stop to listen.

  
Before Ryoko could protest, Yuliy was sitting in front of her on a box smoothing calendula balm over her hands. He could hear her heartbeat quickening, along with a few other small signs that he was making her uncomfortable, but it did not make Yuliy suspicious. He was used to having that effect on people. However, he was trying to do something nice for her, so he tried to put her at ease.

  
“We did not have any doctors in our village,” Yuliy said gravely. “But my mother knew a little about medicine. She would make something like this to speed the healing of small wounds. It will also guard against infection.”

  
“Your village?” Ryoko asked. “It was called Dogville, right?”

  
“Yes.” Yuliy’s eyebrows rose. “You remembered..?”

  
Ryoko smiled, “Oh, sure. It’s a pretty interesting name. I’d never even heard of it before.”

  
Yuliy felt troubled. Ryoko remembered the few details about his life that he had shared at lunch on Friday, but not the traumatizing vampire attack a few hours later. She was living her life as if it had never happened because she had been manipulated by man-eating monsters… and the enemy had only captured Ryoko because Yuliy had left her alone.

  
Yuliy released Ryoko’s hands, and she ran her thumb over her palm experimentally. The balm had not left her feeling sticky, and had a light, inoffensive scent. She asked curiously, “Did your mom teach you how to make this?”

  
“No,” Yuliy replied. He replaced the lid on the jar and held it up for Ryoko to see the label. “I ordered this online.”

  
There was a knock at the door and Dorothea let herself in. She had a broom in one hand. “Yuliy, there you are,” she said primly. To Ryoko, she apologized. “I’m sorry, is he bothering you? I just can’t seem to get these two to help me with all this cleaning we have to do.” She was smiling, but Yuliy picked up on the impatience simmering just beneath her cheerful exterior.  
Ryoko also noticed, and instinctively hid her hands behind her back. “Oh, no, he wasn’t… I was just getting back to work.”  
Dorothea glanced around the room, her gaze falling on the stack of boxes that Ryoko had already gone through. “Wow, things are really coming along in here,” she remarked. Then she scanned the desk, spotting Ryoko’s phone beside her laptop, and asked casually, “Oh, did you get your phone fixed?”

  
Ryoko frowned, looking down at her phone and blinking a few times. “No, I don’t think it was broken,” she said finally. She compulsively picked it up off of her desk and put it in her pocket. “Why do you ask?”

  
There was a slight twitch to Dorothea’s eyebrow as she replied, “No? I must have just...misunderstood something. It’s just as well…” She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe. “Did you hear about what happened in that repair shop in Akihabara?”

  
Hugging herself as if she somehow caught a chill in the oppressively hot Annex, Ryoko replied, “Of course, it’s all over the news. They’re saying it was done by terrorists.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand how someone could do something like that, and then get away with it in broad daylight!”

  
“We’ll just have to be careful and look out for each other,” Dorothea said, nodding to Yuliy. “Let’s go, these cobwebs won’t sweep themselves. We’ll do lunch later, okay, Ryoko?”

  
“Sure,” Ryoko answered distantly. She sat in front of her sleeping laptop and squinted at her dark reflection as she thought she felt another headache coming on. Then the screen flickered back to life and she decided the best distraction was to keep working.

  
Yuliy followed Dorothea out of Fallon’s office and up the stairs. Before they reached her office, Dorothea paused and handed him the broom. He looked at it, then back at her and asked, “Were you serious about the cobwebs?”

  
“Of course I was serious, this place is a dump,” Dorothea said, sounding shocked. Then she lowered her voice and explained, “I’ve changed my mind. We’re staying put.”

  
Yuliy’s grip tightened on the broom handle. “But the enemy knows--”

  
“But they don’t know that we know,” Dorothea held up a finger to silence him. “Hear me out. The enemy knows we’re here, and they’ve probably known for a while, but they haven’t tried to kill us yet which means that we’ve possibly got a mole.” She held up a second finger. “We’ve also ID’d a high profile target, along with who knows how many other vampires in his coven, plus whatever scheme they’re running at ALMA Electronics. This isn’t the kind of anthill we can kick over by ourselves, Yuliy. We need the big guns.”

  
“So have you told the Professor any of this?” Yuliy asked flatly.

  
“No, not yet,” Dorothea grinned and looked sheepishly over her shoulder. “But Philip already told Jiro so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he finds out. If he thinks we should tactically retreat, I won’t argue, but let’s see how long we can hold out…” She trailed off, then added thoughtfully, “I can’t believe I complained that it was ever boring around here. Miss Naoe really livened things up.”

  
His current circumstances troubled Yuliy but he was having a hard time articulating why. “Is she...is she staying?” He finally asked. Dorothea tilted her head to one side and considered him for a moment before answering.

  
“Well, with Vampires watching her every move, this is the safest place for her to be right now,” she said. “Even if she has no idea how much danger is in. It’s kind of miraculous, don’t you think?”

  
Dorothea’s suggestion shocked Yuliy. The Vampires’ awful supernatural powers, which they used to prey on innocent people, miraculous? “What do you mean?” He demanded.

  
She seemed equally surprised by his vehement reaction. “Calm down,” she told him. “I’m not a huge fan of them all of a sudden. I’m just saying, haven’t you ever wondered what your life would be like if you weren’t a Jaeger?” Her expression grew sorrowful. “If you could forget about all of the terrible things that we’ve seen, or the things we had to do?”

  
Forget about me. Forget about Mother, and Dogville… and forget about the Jaegers, Mikhail’s distant voice rang in his ears, and Yuliy ducked his head to hide the pain on his face. Angrily, he answered Dorothea, “I could never forget. I could never let those monsters win.”

  
“I guess there’s no point in arguing with you,” Dorothea cut him off impatiently, and yawned. “I’ve got to finish my report. You do know how to use one of those, right?” She pointed to the broom. Yuliy nodded. Dorothea waved him off and dragged her feet down the hall toward her office, closing the door solidly behind her.

* * *

2:00 PM, Annex

Ryoko was rubbing the tender heels of her palms into her tired eyes when she heard a sudden shout of surprise and pain from the rear of the house. She met Dorothea in the hall as both women hurried to the open back door. They found Yuliy in the garden, standing over Philip who was pinned beneath a pile of rugs.

  
“What happened?” Dorothea asked, sounding genuinely afraid for a moment, which caught Ryoko off guard. Did she think there had been an altercation?

  
Philip writhed beneath the rugs and shouted, “Get these musty things off of me! I hate them! They’re so damn heavy!”  
“You shouldn’t have tried to carry so many,” Yuliy said. His dry delivery reminded Ryoko of a stern older brother, and she giggled. It caught Yuliy’s attention but she covered her mouth and cleared her throat self-consciously as he looked her way.  
Hands on her hips, Dorothea studied Philip critically and said, “You know what, Philip, you might just be onto something. Why don’t we unroll these rugs and have a nice picnic lunch outside in the fresh air?” She looked between Yuliy and Ryoko for approval. “You kids must be famished.”

  
Ryoko and Yuliy both nodded. Dorothea smiled, then asked Ryoko, “Are you sure you don’t mind helping out?”

  
“Not at all,” Ryoko answered sincerely. Reassured, Dorothea instructed them to find the packages of dry ramen stored away in the cupboards and whatever ingredients they could scavenge from the refrigerator to make a hearty soup. Philip, still being slowly crushed under the weight of the rugs, complained loudly that it was too hot for soup, but no one was listening.  
Ryoko was much hungrier than she let on, and more excited than she should have been to do something other than her job. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cooked a large meal with others, but it reminded her of a happier, simpler time in her life. Unfortunately, the meager offerings of the Annex’s kitchen did not meet her nostalgic expectations. She discovered six packages of instant ramen scattered around the kitchen glanced toward Yuliy, who was standing in front of the open fridge trying to appear as if he knew what he was looking for.

  
“Do you have any _dashi_?” She asked.

  
“No,” Yuliy said uncertainly. He didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know what _dashi_ was. Ryoko came to stand beside him, ducking under his outstretched arm to see around the refrigerator door. For a moment, she was close enough that he caught just a whiff of the calendula balm mixed with the floral smell of her soap, but then it was once again overpowered by the odor of food that had been forgotten in the fridge for far too long.

  
“That’s okay,” Ryoko wrinkled her nose and poked around delicately for something, anything suitable for their soup. “We can make a decent substitute with some chicken or vegetable stock…”

  
Yuliy scanned the higher shelves inside of the fridge. “I don’t see anything like that in here.”

  
“What about _katsuboshi_?” Ryoko asked, beginning to sound impatient. “Or at least some _tare_?” Cluelessly, Yuliy shook his head, and glanced toward the kitchen door as if seeking some sort of support from his fellow Jaegers. Out of the window, he could see Dorothea teasing Philip about the dirt on his clothes, and wondered how they could be acting as if nothing was amiss.

  
Ryoko liked to think she was a decent person that didn’t judge others, but the sorry state of the Annex’s kitchen was testing her resolve. She sighed, then set her feet squarely in front of the fridge as if it was a fencing opponent waiting to charge her from across the ring. She waved Yuliy out of her way and ordered him to start boiling two pots of water, which he definitely knew how to do. After a few minutes’ digging she came away from the fridge with some Thai chili fish paste, a carton of eggs, and a handful of wilting spring onions. She would have preferred to have gotten everything fresh and prepared the broth well in advance, but this was the best they could do on such short notice.

  
Yuliy watched Ryoko roll up her shirt sleeves and lay the onions on top of a wooden cutting board and raise a chef’s knife over them cautiously. The bandages on her fingers made it difficult for her to get a good grip on the worn handle, and the knife’s edge had been dulled by time and neglect in a kitchen drawer. Impulsively, he reached out to cover her hand with his before he was forced to watch her chop her fingers off.

  
“I think I should do that,” he said. Immediately, Ryoko’s face flushed pink and she pulled her hand back as if his touch had burned her.

  
“You’re probably right,” she agreed awkwardly, and stepped aside. Without saying more, Yuliy began to chop the onions and Ryoko focused all of her attention on flavoring the broth. She found dried mushrooms and half a bottle of soy sauce in the cabinets, and thought she made a halfway decent base by blending them with the fish paste. She tasted a small amount on a spoon before dumping it into the larger of the two simmering pots. Thoughtfully, she said to herself, “_Ku areba raku ari._”

  
“What was that?” Yuliy asked. He offered Ryoko the cutting board covered in sliced-up spring onions and she gestured for him to push it all into the pot of bubbling water. Then she stirred the broth gently with a chewed-up looking wooden spoon. As savory-smelling steam wafted up around her face, Ryoko felt herself begin to sweat. She wiped at her brow and stepped away from the stove to put her hair up into a messy bun.

  
“_Ku areba raku ari_,” she said again, once she had resumed stirring the broth. “It’s something my mom used to say to me when we came home from kendo tournaments. It means something like… There is pain, and there is joy.” She looked up at Yuliy, and found him watching her face intently, just as before. It flustered her immensely, and she returned her attention to the pots on the stove. “It always made me feel better to hear her say it, especially on the days I didn’t do well. And since we always made ramen after a tournament, I couldn't help but think…” She stopped her nervous babbling, certain that she was boring him. “Sorry, you don’t need to hear my life’s story! We’re just making lunch!” She pointed to the carton of eggs on the counter. “Could you put four of those in this other pot here?”

  
He obliged, gingerly using his bare hands to drop them in. They cracked on the bottom of the pot and the egg whites quickly clouded the water. “Careful!” Ryoko chided, but it was too late. She moved on to opening the packages of dry ramen and breaking them up into the broth. Dorothea came into the kitchen and drew in a deep breath.

  
“Wow, that smells amazing,” she exclaimed. “How’s it going in here?”

  
Yuliy shrugged noncommittally. For some reason, Dorothea winked at him. “Well, whatever you’re doing, keep it up,” she said. “I’m just going to get water. Yuliy, why don’t you get out bowls for everyone?”

  
It was almost surreal to be setting up a picnic in the garden when just that morning, they had been ready to abandon the Annex to the enemy. After the soup had finished cooking and everyone was seated on one of the ornate floor rugs on the ground, Dorothea carefully raised her bowl in a toast to her teammates. “Thanks for the food!”

  
The others followed her lead, though Philip also mumbled, “It’s still too hot for soup.”

  
It was far from the healthiest or heartiest ramen Ryoko had ever made, but it felt good to make something at all. Dorothea apologized for the bare state of their kitchen and then entertained them with stories of her most hazardous meals while working in the field, including a subarctic expedition where she found her teams’ supplies being raided by Russian black bears. Ryoko noticed that even Philip refrained from making snide comments, but it was because he was nodding off with the bowl of ramen half-finished in his lap. She was about to say something when he fell forward, forcing everyone to leap to their feet to avoid the soup that splashed across the rug. Then he rolled to one side, wet and sputtering indignantly as he realized what had happened.

  
Not even trying to hide her laughter, Dorothea asked Yuliy to help Philip get cleaned up inside. “Poor thing,” she told Ryoko once the boys were out of earshot. “He pushes himself too hard sometimes. I don’t think I pulled so many all-nighters when I was in school.” She grinned and added, “Though maybe that says more about the kind of student I was, not the homework. Can you help me get all of this inside? And forget about the rug, I don’t think one more soup stain is going to hurt it.”  
Ryoko helped Dorothea collect their bowls and utensils and carried them to the kitchen sink. Her elevated mood gave away to cold dread as she read the time off of a wall clock.

  
“Four thirty!” She shouted. “I can’t believe it’s gotten so late!”

  
“Oh, it’s got to be nearly five now,” Dorothea said nonchalantly. “That clock is twenty minutes slow. I keep meaning to fix it.”  
Ryoko groaned. “I barely got anything done today!” She turned to Dorothea. “I’m sorry. I’m going to have to stay late if I want to stay on track…”

  
“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Dorothea replied, waving her hand. “It’s really my fault, I shouldn’t have asked you to make our lunch. It was nice, though.” She suggested, “Why don’t you take it home with you instead? I bet it’s nicer at your apartment than here in this old place.”

  
Ryoko hesitated. She did like the sound of working from home, but she worried that it would make her look lazy. Dorothea, however, had made up her mind for her. “Really, I insist,” she said, nudging Ryoko toward the door to Fallon’s office. “I have to get out of here in a few minutes myself.”

  
“Thank you,” Ryoko bobbed her head and scurried into the other room to pack up her things. Dorothea yawned so hugely that it brought tears to her eyes, and she carefully dabbed at them with her sleeves in order to avoid smudging her eyeliner. Then Yuliy entered and walked toward the sink to begin washing dishes.

  
“Philip is asleep,” he said simply. “Did I hear you say that you were going somewhere?”

  
“Yeah, I’ve got a hot date tonight,” Dorothea answered mischievously. Yuliy looked at her sharply but she did not go into detail. “Leave the dishes for now, you can clean them up later. Right now I think you should help Miss Naoe to her car.”  
Yuliy’s confusion deepened, “Why?”

  
“Because she just made you lunch, and it’s a nice thing to do!” Dorothea’s voice rose incredulously. “God, I really worry about you, you know that?” She leaned toward him with with one hand on the counter and added, much quieter, “Besides, we should look out for her. We can’t forget that she’s in as much danger as we are, but she doesn’t even know it.”

  
Again, Yuliy found himself feeling uneasy about Ryoko and all of the unnecessary complications she had brought into their already tenuous situation. “Have you told the Professor?” He asked again.

  
“I’m afraid that he’s still not answering his phone,” Dorothea replied. “But I’ll try it again as soon as I’m back, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, she trotted out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

  
Yuliy would never question Dorothea’s loyalty, but he did not understand her decision to keep treating Ryoko as if nothing had happened. He could not believe that she was motivated solely by concern for Ryoko’s safety, since it hadn’t mattered at all before the appearance of the Vampires on Friday. There was something else going on that Dorothea was not telling him, and Yuliy wondered if he should try to get in touch with the Professor himself.

  
He left the kitchen and found Ryoko leaving Fallon’s office overburdened by her laptop bag, office supplies, and a cardboard file box with worn handles that dug into her fingers. She set the box down among the others scattered in the entryway and pulled out her phone to call for a ride. Then she looked up at Yuliy and smiled.

  
He stopped short, troubled again by the memory of Ryoko in the alleyway just a few days before, and asked, “Are you leaving?”

  
“I’m going to do some work from home,” Ryoko said. He was probably relieved that the bossy soup girl was leaving, she thought. He hadn’t said much at all while they ate, and she had no idea if he had even enjoyed it. She was fully aware she was babbling when she continued to explain, “The day just totally got away from me! But I… um…” She searched his serious face for any kind of emotional response. “I liked having lunch with everyone.”

  
Yuliy nodded. “It was good.” The simple sentence hung in the empty air between them, and Ryoko’s smile faltered for just a moment. He took a step closer and tried again. “That is, the soup was good,” he said. “But it was also good to share a meal with the others. I haven’t done that in a long time.”

  
Ryoko’s expression softened. “I’m glad that you enjoyed it. Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

  
Ryoko turned away to make her phone call, and once she had agreed on a point to meet Akimoto, she hung up and faced Yuliy again. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and adjusted her bags before bending down to lift a box from the floor.  
Yuliy took two quick strides forward and offered, “Let me get that.”

  
Ryoko hesitated, then took a step back and allowed Yuliy to help. She ducked her head and murmured her thanks, but neither of them noticed that he had picked up the wrong box and then followed her out of the front door. They walked in silence across the campus, and Akimoto was already waiting for them outside of the car on the curb in front of the University. He greeted Ryoko respectfully and inclined his head toward Yuliy.

  
“Oh, excuse me,” Ryoko said as Akimoto opened the rear passenger door and she pushed all of her stuff onto the seat. “Yuliy this is, uh, my driver, Mr Akimoto…” She laughed nervously, worried about how posh she must have looked. “Mr Akimoto, this is Yuliy Jirov, he works at the Anthropology Department, too.”

  
Akimoto nodded serenely at Yuliy. “Well met, Mr Jirov,” he said lightly.

  
While he remembered that he had to act as if they did not know each other, Yuliy also recalled the frustration and anger he had felt on Friday when Akimoto had dragged him back to the Annex on the Professor’s orders. Ryoko saw him scowling as she reached for the box and asked, “Is everything alright?” Her fingertips brushed the back of Yuliy’s hands and he focused again on her face.  
“Yes,” Yuliy answered stiffly, and let Ryoko take the box from him. Shyly she thanked him again and climbed into the car. Akimoto closed the door behind her, nodded once more at Yuliy, and drove away.

Yuliy stood at the curb a few moments, considering what to do next. He turned his head as a familiar silhouette passed out of the corner of his eye and saw Dorothea walking quickly off of campus with a large purse slung over her shoulder. It took him less than a second to decide that he was going to follow her. He knew that her skills as a Jaeger would force him to work hard to avoid being discovered, but he was determined to find out what she was hiding.

  
Fortunately for him, Dorothea’s ‘date’ was within walking distance of the University. He let her keep a healthy lead as she went south, following a busy main street over the Katase River until she ducked into an _izakaya_ in the shadow of an overpass right beside the tracks of the Yokohama Line. Yuliy could see her being greeted by the small restaurant’s friendly waitstaff and taking a seat at the bar. He was puzzled when she sat with her back to the front door, but he did not assume that it meant she had let her guard down. He went into a bookstore across the street, blending in with the University students that had camped out in the cafe area for the evening, and sat down where he could observe the patrons of the tavern without being seen.

  
Fifteen minutes passed. Dorothea placed an order with the bartender and chatted with the servers at the restaurant, while other patrons entered and filled up the seats around her. She nursed a large glass of red wine and scrolled on her phone for twenty more minutes before she signaled for her check. Watching closely, Yuliy saw the bartender take Dorothea’s credit card to the back room. When they returned, they handed her a folded manila envelope along with her receipt and she tucked both of them into her purse. After a final round of good-byes from the staff, Dorothea exited the restaurant and turned left, resuming her evening stroll at a leisurely pace.

  
Yuliy waited half a minute then left the cafe to continue his pursuit. He saw her disappear around a corner, taking a side street into a quiet residential neighborhood. It would be more challenging for Yuliy to evade her notice if he walked behind her as before, but he could match her pace from a few blocks over as she zig-zagged north, doubling back toward the University. He could feel exhaustion from the long day slowing his senses and clouding his judgement, and he hoped that Dorothea would not keep him out for much longer.

  
The sky grew dark as the sun set behind the heavy clouds overhead, and Yuliy lost sight of Dorothea as she passed through the shadows under a cluster of trees. He hesitated, then decided to follow after her. Beyond the trees was a footbridge over the river, and Dorothea stood beneath a bright street lamp, waiting expectantly.

  
Yuliy realized she must have known he was there the entire time. He felt exposed as he walked over the bridge to meet her. She was smiling, but the warmth did not reach her eyes, and her voice was tight when she told him, “You know, there are easier ways to pick up dating tips than stalking me, Yuliy.”

  
He frowned, wondering why she was continuing with the ruse. “You weren’t on a date,” he said. “You didn’t meet anyone.”  
“I took myself out,” Dorothea insisted, crossing her arms. “Haven’t you ever heard of self-care?” She could see that he was not amused, and sighed. “Alright, alright. My date stood me up. But at least he sent me a consolation prize.” She reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope she had received from the bartender and dramatically fanned herself with it. “Maybe if you’re good on the walk home, I’ll even let you see it.”

  
Yuliy did not think he had any other choice.

* * *

When Ryoko got into her blissfully air-conditioned apartment, she deposited the box and her computer on the floor in the living room and went into the bedroom to change her clothes. Her hands felt better, and she pulled off the bandages that had been getting in her way all day. Then as she went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water, a classmate from high school called and they spent an hour making haphazard plans to meet and catch up over the weekend. When she hung up, Ryoko found that the conversation had renewed her appetite, but she seriously lacked groceries and the energy to do any more shopping, so she went online and ordered delivery from someplace nearby. She convinced herself to hold off on working until her food arrived, and happily zoned out on her phone until she was notified that her food was on the way.

  
It was almost seven thirty when at last Ryoko sat down to finish her work. She berated herself for procrastinating since it meant she would have to stay up even later, but at least she could do it in comfort. She arranged her containers of take-out around her laptop as it booted up and opened the box of documents she had brought from the Annex. Immediately, she noticed that something was wrong.

  
Inside of the box were several bundles of brown paper tied with thick cord. Handwritten on the bundles were long strings of numbers, but it was a mystery what they could possibly mean. She lifted one lumpy parcel out of the box and thought it weighed about as much as the folders she’d been sorting through before, and decided to peek inside.

  
She untied the cord and peeled back the paper to reveal what looked like the title page of a typed manuscript. Then something small rolled out of the package and fell into her lap. It was a glass bottle of grey sand, corked and sealed with shiny red wax. Whatever it was, it probably didn’t have anything to do with tax records. She glanced over the title of the yellowed document, then read it again, not quite understanding what she held in her hand.

27.9.2010  
INCIDENT AT AURORA  
HOI AN VIETNAM

REPORTED BY  
A.Q. FALLON

MISSION STATUS: COMPLETE


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to say thanks to everyone who has read and left kind comments on this fic. I am having a lot of fun writing this. There was a big delay in getting this chapter posted because I had to travel for work. Hope it is worth the wait!

Chapter Four 

Monday 14 August 20:30, Annex

The Annex was dark and quiet when the Jaegers returned from their evening constitutional. As they crept up the stairs to the second floor, they could hear Philip snoring in his room down the hall and made the effort not to disturb him. After they had closed the door behind them, Dorothea looked around at the mess in her office and mused, “Do you think that Miss Naoe might help me get reorganized once she’s finished with sorting through Fallon’s files?”

Yuliy didn’t want to talk about Ryoko. He stood in front of Dorothea’s desk and asked, “What’s in the envelope?”

Dorothea frowned at him, then sat in her chair and pulled the envelope out of her purse. Her tone shifted from conversational to businesslike as she explained, “You know that before I before I signed up with the Organization I was something of a treasure hunter. I never discovered any lost cities or anything like that, but I did have a knack for getting into those hard-to-reach places.” She withdrew several sheets of paper from the envelope and laid them out on top of the information that Philip had gathered on the Byzantium. These new pages appeared to be low-quality scans of other printed materials, and she was forced to squint at the too-small text in order to determine what language it was even written in. She continued, “When I was looking through old case notes, I saw a reference to an artifact I hadn’t heard about since I was recruited.”

Yuliy leaned forward as she pushed one particular page toward him. It was a copy of a hand-drawn circular diagram, covered in abstract shapes and hastily scribbled notes that he could not decipher. He pushed it back toward her. “What does this mean?”

“I was actually hoping that you could tell me, Yuliy,” Dorothea said, amused. She leaned forward onto her desk, resting her chin on her hand and watched him from beneath long black lashes. “Do you know anything about an object called ‘the Ark of Sirius?’”

A chill went up Yuliy’s spine. He was certain that he had never heard that name before. “What is it?” He asked Dorothea.

She shrugged and leaned back in her chair. “Beats me! There aren’t very many direct sources on the subject, and they all seem to disagree on what the Ark is supposed to be. One of them thinks it’s a box, somebody else thinks it’s a book, and a lot of them don’t seem to think it exists at all!” She dropped the diagram ineffectually onto her desk, then yawned and sank petulantly into her seat like a child trying to stay up past her curfew. 

“What does it have to do with the current mission?” Yuliy frowned, his eyes scanning the contents of the envelope but his brain unable to make any sense of what he was seeing. Unwillingly, he also yawned, and Dorothea pushed herself up out of her chair with a groan.

“It’s got nothing to do with our friend Kershner or the NTC,” Dorothea said. “I actually saw it come up in Yevgraf’s file.” She shrugged. “But I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere on this tonight. Go to bed and we’ll go over this again tomorrow.”

Yuliy’s heart began to pound in his chest at the mention of Yevgraf’s name. What was his connection to this Ark? Would Mikhail know? And who was relaying all of this to Dorothea?

He didn’t know how he could sleep with so many questions left unanswered, but his head grew heavy the instant he stepped into his room. The last thing he remembered was seeing the instrument case on his dresser and resolving to fix his staff in the morning.

* * *

27.9.2010   
INCIDENT AT AURORA   
HOI AN VIETNAM   
  
REPORTED BY   
A.Q. FALLON   
  
MISSION STATUS: COMPLETE   
  


  
14:30 26.09.10

_ The operation began on time at 12:00. We split up when the Professor asked the woman to go with him to a meeting he had arranged in Old Town. I was surprised at first that he hadn’t asked for  _ me _ , since I’d fight circles around Almanzar, but I think he means to rendezvous with some unsavory black market types. In that case, I have no doubts that the woman will be able to hold her own against even the shrewdest smuggler.  _

_ She has the kind of cruel cunning that makes me glad she’s on our side, but how long do we think that will last? Women were considered bad luck on sailing ships for a reason, but when I said as much to the Professor he told me to get my head out of my ass and back in the 21st century.  _

_ The boy and I are fishing in the canals. I was disappointed to learn that he has no patience for this kind of sport. It doesn’t help that the local authorities keep showing up, but no matter how many times I explain it, they can’t seem to understand that I am trying to teach the runt a valuable lesson. He’s stronger than any lad his age but he has no mind for strategy. He imagines the hunt as a bloody retribution. It freaks me out to see that kind of ruthlessness on a kid’s face, and sometimes I wonder if the Professor really knows what he’s doing. _

20:15 

_ We finally gave up on the fish when the lantern-lighters started to come around. I took the long way through Old Town to try and get the boy interested in the culture, but he only seems to care about tonight’s operation. Now we’re in a tiny restaurant favored by the locals for their pork noodles, and the kid won’t eat anything except grilled chicken and greens. I’ve known my share of introverts, but he really can’t be bothered to take a personal interest in any of the places that we’ve traveled. It’s a real shame. Some days, these rare moments where I can pretend to be a big, stupid tourist taking in the sights are all that keep me going. _

22:20

_ The Professor and the woman are late to our first meet-up point just outside of the hotel. Young Jirov is getting restless but we will stick to the plan. In ten minutes we will move inside to our second point. If the Professor fails to join us there we will have to turn back. I really hope he’s in there. I don’t want to think about what will happen to those girls if they spend one more night in the care of those soulless creatures.  _

02:35 27.09.10

_ I was right. The Professor’s boy was not ready.  _

_ We went into the Aurora and checked into our rooms on the sixth floor. Our luggage had already been delivered for us and I spent the next hour putting the guns back together while the kid paced back and forth getting angrier and angrier about the Professor. I tried to be reasonable but he was putting me on edge, and I lost my temper. I shouted at him to either be quiet or he would have to sit out the mission, and he stormed out of the room. _

_ It was about 23:00. An hour until the operation was set to begin. I finished assembling my rifle and I wanted to go looking for Jirov, but I met Willard and Almanzar in the elevator. There was no time to waste. We armed ourselves and left to take our positions: Almanzar on the roof overlooking the garden while the Professor and I flanked the party on either side. _

_ It was a nice soirée if you didn’t know what was really going on. The women were so bright and colorful and clumsy, like jewels spilled out of their velvet-lined deposit box onto the floor. They weren’t used to the fine clothes and the champagne, but their vile chaperones made sure their glasses were never empty. The poor fools probably thought that after tonight, all of their troubles would be over.  _

_ At 00:00 we began to take out the perimeter guards. We knew that they checked in at 15 minute intervals, which did not give us much time to find our way to their communications hub. At 00:12 Almanzar radioed that she’d spotted the boy in the northwest quadrant of the garden, twenty yards from me. He was stalking one of the party guests that had opened his goodie bag early. I made my way over there as fast as I could, and I will never forget what I saw. _

_ The girl was already dead, which I had expected. Her blood was all over the ground and the front of our new friend’s tuxedo. I was coming up from behind the mark when Jirov jumped out of a bush like a wolverine. I started to run in to save his sorry ass because I knew he had no weapons, but he didn’t need my help. As fast as a tomcat, he jumped up and got his arms around the mark’s neck from behind. The guy took a few powerful swings but couldn’t shake him off, so he rolled forward, slamming them both onto their backs and knocking the wind from the kid’s lungs. Still, he hung on tight, and bit right through the guy’s left ear. Dumbass. The guy started screaming. _

_ All of the pretty party people hurried inside, except for the security. Almanzar started sniping and reading off the enemy’s positions until the Professor ordered her into the hotel. We still needed to find our main target and put an end to his dirty deeds once and for all. _

_ Meanwhile, our boy’s dance partner finally wrenched himself free. He threw the kid to the ground and kicked him like a dog in the puddle of the dead woman’s blood, laughing as he did it. I ran in, ready to light him up like the Chinese New Year, but wouldn’t you know it, the bastard was a Royal. _

_ He flew over my head quick-as-you-please and threw two knives into my left shoulder. I turned and fired off three shots but they went wide as the monster did pirouettes ten feet in the air. I yelled at the kid to find out if he was still conscious and told him to run. I couldn't keep an eye on him and the flying barrel of monkeys at the same time.  _

_ Jirov was already up and running the other direction. I raised my rifle and watched that fucking bloodsucker dance in my sights. Then I heard something coming up fast from behind. _

_ It was the kid! He had taken a running start and came at me straight as an arrow. I couldn't move. Then he jumped, using my good shoulder as a step to hurl himself impossibly high and wrap both his bony hands around that raging Royal’s ankles.  _

_ The wretch kicked and screamed but the Professor’s boy refused to let go. He hauled himself up and sank his teeth into the monster’s calf, then used it as leverage to flip and kick him in the face. They both went tumbling out of the sky, crashing through a topiary and into a big fountain. The boy had the bad luck of landing on his back, and the Royal held him underwater while I ran to his aid. I fired as soon as I could get a shot and the brute leapt clear. My young friend climbed up out of the fountain weighed down by his waterlogged clothes and coughing so violently that he puked. I stood over him with my weapon ready as our foe touched down a short distance away, looking a little worse for wear.  _

_ “You must be with the Jaegers,” said the nasty thing. “I can’t stand your bad manners!” _

_ He hurled more knives--I still don’t know where he was keeping them--and I braced my gun to protect my most important parts. But the boy ran out suddenly from behind me and howled when one blade sank deep into his thigh. He kept going, limping and losing blood as he ripped the knife out of his own damn leg and tackled the monster to the ground. He stabbed and slashed at the thing over and over again until I could no longer hear it fighting. Then he was sitting in a pile of ashes, watching them slip through his fingers like a dream. _

_ The Royals are of great interest to the Professor, so I collected a small sample before it all blew away and tucked it into my pockets for safekeeping. Then I put a hand on the boy’s shoulders and told him to get up. He seemed stunned. _

_ I did not tell him then that I was impressed he had been able to destroy a Royal vampire, and on the night of his first hunt. I also did not tell him had fucked up the operation pretty badly by alerting everyone to our presence, and put himself in needless danger by letting his emotions get the better of him. It wouldn’t have meant jack shit, coming from me. The Professor would see him sorted out later. _

_ First, we had to find him. “The others are inside,” I said to Jirov. “They’ll need our help. Can you walk?” _

_ He nodded and tried to stand, but his leg folded under him and he shouted out in pain. I helped him tie off the wound and try again. He wasn’t very fast, but he could get around without help. We headed into the hotel, not knowing what we would find. _

_ It was a nightmare. Male and female human corpses were strewn around the ostentatious lobby like confetti, filling the air with such a stink. The boy vomited again, but he had nothing left in his stomach, so he only dry heaved until he was out of breath. _

_ I was grateful that I did not see the Professor or Almanzar among the wreckage. I left Jirov and ran ahead, seeing the mysterious ashen remains of a few monsters scattered through the halls as proof that my fellow Jaegers had passed through here. Outside I could hear the authorities approaching as the hotel’s other guests fled the premises. We could not risk lingering a minute longer. I went back to secure the Professor’s boy and took our emergency escape route, leaving all of my weapons behind.  _

_ The Professor and the woman were waiting for us in the safe house outside of the city. They really gave the boy an earful, and I am sorry to report that it was well deserved. _

_ The Organization had spent over two years infiltrating a human trafficking ring that had been a source of both money and fresh blood to our enemies. We had finally identified a powerful player who had been paying off the local government in order to run his operation right out of one of the city’s hotels, but he had escaped in all of the confusion. Then his slavering thralls killed every single one of their human hostages so that no one in their ring could ever be identified. _

_ The boy hasn’t said a word since Willard’s tongue lashing. We’re heading north now, to Hanoi, over brackish back roads that make it difficult to continue writing my notes. I’ll end it here and make my edits when I’m typing up the final draft. _

_ FAITHFULLY, _

_ ALISTAIR Q FALLON _

* * *

Tuesday 15 August 06:30

When Ryoko’s alarm went off, she woke to find the morning was cool and overcast. She could hear her neighbors moving around their apartments and getting ready to take on the day, but she was feeling lethargic and loathed to leave the comfort of her bed. She wasted twenty minutes on social media before she forced herself to get up and into the shower. Then she dressed and went into the kitchen to reheat last night’s dinner for breakfast. 

She tried to ignore the mess she had left in the living room when she had gone to bed, but there was nowhere else to sit. Gingerly Ryoko put her laptop and scanner into her bag, trying not to upset the stacks of manuscripts she had pulled out of the Department’s old file box and laid out on the table in utter disbelief. Torn brown paper was piled on the floor beside the cushion where she had been sitting and a few more macabre souvenirs were scattered among the papers, including additional vials of alleged ashes and plaster impressions of very large, very sharp teeth. They were so realistic that Ryoko could not keep herself from imagining what they would look like snapping and snarling in her direction, even though she knew that creatures with jaws like that didn’t really exist.

The documents she had found in the Anthropology Department’s old files were all similar narratives of wholesale violence in exotic locations across the world, written by the one member of the team Ryoko had yet to meet, Alistair Fallon. They were written as reports to a figure called ‘V’ that appeared to be at the head of a mysterious organization dedicated to seeking out and destroying man-eating vampires. Some went into great detail while others had been liberally redacted with thick strokes of black ink, but all around the reports painted a frightening picture of a world infested by a secretive society of powerful undead--at least it would be frightening if any of it was true.

Ryoko was a sensible girl. She knew better than to believe that Fallon was recounting actual events, but she was puzzled by the appearance of Dorothea, the Professor, and even Yuliy in his writing. Perhaps they would explain if she asked them, but she also considered returning the file box to the Annex and acting as if nothing had ever happened. Unfortunately the mix-up meant she still had some catching up to do… And she wouldn’t accomplish any of it sitting around here. She decided to leave the box in her living room to be dealt with another day.

She did not bring up her discovery to Akimoto, who seemed to be thoughtfully quiet when he picked her up. As they pulled up to the University he warned her of impending rain in the forecast and even handed her an umbrella.

“Wow, thank you,” Ryoko said, pleasantly surprised.

Akimoto smiled genially, said good-bye, and drove away. 

The Annex was quiet when Ryoko walked in a few minutes early, and there was no one in the kitchen when she put the kettle on the stove to make herself tea. She scrolled on her phone as she waited for the water to boil and did not hear Yuliy until he set a long rectangular instrument case on the table. Ryoko looked up and smiled reflexively, while Yuliy only nodded. He went the long way around the kitchen island to pour himself a glass of tap water and then returned to the table.

As Yuliy moved around the kitchen, Ryoko studied him surreptitiously, trying to imagine him as the violent character Fallon had described in his strange stories. The young man before her was quiet and unassuming, nothing like how she pictured a vampire hunter. 

The kettle whistled shrilly. Ryoko pulled out a mug for herself, and then asked Yuliy over her shoulder if he would like some tea. His eyebrows rose slightly but he accepted her offer, and she rewarded him with another shy smile. Then Philip entered, wearing an oversized t-shirt and loose-fitting athletic shorts. His hair was even messier than usual, and there were dark bags under his eyes. It was obvious to Ryoko that he had just woken up, but she was shocked to see him in his pajamas. She asked him in a friendly tone if he would like some tea as well, and he scowled.

“No thanks,” he replied, politely enough. “Going to need something stronger than that.” Philip refilled the kettle and replaced it on the stove before digging around in the cabinet noisily for a bag of coffee beans. 

Ryoko brought both teacups to the table and set one down in front of Yuliy. She leaned forward curiously as he opened the case, expecting to see a flute or some other woodwind instrument. Instead he withdrew three metallic rods that appeared to be connected by chains that had been broken, and the smooth black lacquer on the rods had been badly scratched in several places, exposing stainless steel. On the table next to the case were jars of solvents and cleaners that Ryoko recognized as essential to the care and upkeep of metal blades, which made her eyes go wide with surprise.

“Uh, what’s all this, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Yuliy opened his mouth to answer, but then the awful noise of an electric coffee grinder filled the room and made them both flinch. When it ended, Philip yawned rudely and said, “Sorry.” 

Yuliy waited a moment longer, then told Ryoko, “This is my staff.” He lifted one of the rods and twisted it, forcing a short blade to spring from one end. Ryoko jumped in astonishment. Was something like this even  _ legal _ in Japan? Yuliy continued dismantling the staff, laying the blade on top of a towel and organizing the bits and pieces of the inner mechanism neatly in front of him on the table.

Her reaction had not gone unnoticed by Philip. He grinned at her as the kettle whined and said, “I wouldn’t be worried. His bark is worse than his bite.” He thought this was especially funny, and snickered as he finished fixing his coffee. Yuliy, predictably, did not react, but began cleaning his staff mechanically with one of the strong-smelling solvents and a rag. 

Ryoko was unsettled but fought to keep it hidden. She looked away, toward the door to the Professor’s office. “Um,” she began again nervously. “Do you know if the Professor is in today?”

“Willard went away,” Yuliy replied stoically.

“Oh,” Ryoko said, a little concerned now. “Do you know when he’ll be back? I have to ask him some things. Fill out a few forms…”

“He didn’t say,” Yuliy answered. He picked up the blade, hesitated, then set it down. “But we can help you. What do you need to know?”

“I’ll get the papers,” Ryoko said, and hurried out of the room with her tea still in hand. When the door to Fallon’s office swung shut behind her, Philip glared over his steaming cup of coffee at Yuliy.

“Seriously, you have to clean that thing  _ right now _ ?” He snapped. “And you’ve got the gonads to hassle  _ me _ about leaving some reports lying around? You’re out of your mind.”

Yuliy shrugged. Ryoko came back into the kitchen with a folder containing a handful of forms, identical to those she had filled out for Dorothea but with the Professor’s name on top. She sat in the same seat but kept glancing up at Yuliy, who continued to clean his weapon as he told her the Professor’s educational and professional history. He did not go into much detail, but he was able to answer everything that she asked, and Ryoko was grateful. 

“Thank you,” she said when they were finished. Warily, she pulled another blank set of forms out of the folder and faced Philip, who had been sitting silently on his phone at the kitchen island. “Uh, if you’ve got the time Mr Lewenhart, maybe we could--”

“Sorry, I’m busy today,” Philip cut her off abruptly and stood. He dumped the rest of his coffee in the sink and said, “I don’t want any distractions while I’m studying, so I’m going to the library.” As he walked out, Ryoko briefly considered chasing after him and being more assertive, but instead she only sighed.

Looking Yuliy’s way again, she asked, “I don’t suppose that you could..?”

In reply, Yuliy shook his head once. “I don’t know him very well,” he explained. “But I’ll ask Dorothea.”

Ryoko got up from the table and thanked him again. When she returned to Fallon’s office, her tea had gone cold where she had forgotten it on the desk, but she felt more awake after her conversation with Yuliy. She had been somewhat surprised by how much he could tell her about the Professor, and she guessed that the two men had known each other for a very, very long time. 

As she resumed scanning documents, she heard Philip getting ready upstairs and then head out the front door. Dorothea came in at the same time, and she heard them talking indistinctly in the foyer. Then Dorothea went into the kitchen, where she loudly exclaimed in English, “Jesus, Yuliy! Put that thing away!” Yuliy responded too quietly for Ryoko to hear, but whatever he said made Dorothea laugh. A short time later she stepped into Fallon’s office with a travel mug of hot coffee and smiled.

“Good morning! How’s it going in here?” She asked, looking slightly harried. Today she wore a blouse, a blazer, and a matching skirt. She looked like she should have been leading a conference in a room full of corporate executives, rather than wrangling the underfunded Anthropology Department. “Yuliy tells me you had a few questions about Philip. How long are you going to be here today? I have to head to an appointment, but I’d be happy to help you when I get back--say, seven o’clock?”

For the second time that day, Ryoko’s brows rose. Seven was rather late, but it did give her time to catch up on what she had missed. Since Dorothea was in such a hurry, she decided not to bring up the strange writings she had found. Instead, Ryoko agreed to meet at seven, and Dorothea dashed out of the door to accomplish whatever it was that would keep her out of the Annex all day.

Ryoko carried on, careful not to let herself get sloppy even though she was trying to work more quickly. As the hours went by, the inside of the Annex grew warm and stale. Even the ceiling fan in Fallon’s office provided no relief. The heat made Ryoko drowsy, but she was able to make it through another cardboard box before she thought it was as good a time as any to take a break. 

She went into the kitchen and saw that the blades to Yuliy’s staff were still laying on the table, gleaming subtly in the otherwise dark room. The back door had been left open to coax fresh air in and the strong odor of solvents out. When Ryoko approached the sink, she looked out of the window and saw Yuliy himself in the rear garden, practicing with his mostly re-assembled staff. Ryoko set her cup down in the sink and went to stand in the doorway to watch him more closely. 

Yuliy spun the staff expertly over his wrist, then brought it down powerfully, stopping just short of gauging one end into the ground. Then he swept around and up, flipping the staff again and following through with a forward lunge that Ryoko was certain would have earned him high marks at any  _ bojutsu _ tournament. Then he put both of his hands on the shaft and triggered the mechanism that split it into three segments, the now-mended chains glinting in the sporadic sun that broke through the trees behind the Annex. To Ryoko it looked like a large, unwieldy  _ nunchaku _ , but Yuliy made it whistle through the air as easily as if it was an extension of his own arm. Besides using the staff, he also kicked and punched invisible enemies, until he ended his regiment with a savage horizontal slash that beheaded a tall foamflower at the edge of the garden. Petals rained down and the stack of white flowers drifted across the grass until it came to a stop at Ryoko’s feet. 

Ryoko had not realized she was holding her breath until Yuliy had stopped his exercise. She looked him up and down, wondering if the Yuliy she barely knew and the Yuliy she had read about were not really that different from each other. The front and back of his shirt was soaked through with sweat, and the hair that had escaped from his ponytail clung to his handsome face. He was breathing heavily, watching her with his too-blue eyes, and something in his slightly-hunched body language made her think of a prowling animal. She should have been nervous now that she had seen him work that obviously dangerous weapon--but to her horror, she discovered that watching him had turned her on.

Red-faced and terrified that he could somehow read her mind, Ryoko clapped her hands and asked, too loudly, “Wow, Yuliy, where did you learn to fight like that?”

Yuliy had not anticipated an audience when he had started exercising in the garden. He had only meant to test the staff after making a few quick repairs. The appearance of vampires in Tokyo meant he did not have the time to wait for the parts he needed to fix his weapon back to peak condition, but he still felt better having it back in his hands again. That feeling had gone away once he saw that Ryoko had been watching him wide-eyed in the doorway. He answered her question as honestly as he could, “The Professor taught me.”

“Professor Willard? For real?” Ryoko’s brown eyes drifted over Yuliy’s face searching for some reassurance that he wasn’t secretly a monster hunter, but as she followed a bead of sweat down his throat and over his collarbone, she felt her unexpected attraction to him intensify. 

Yuliy, unaware of Ryoko’s inner turmoil as he was wrapped up well within his own, nodded. He did not want to elaborate on why he had learned to fight, fearing that it would arouse her suspicions and perhaps even cause her to regain her memory. He couldn’t let that happen--not just for Ryoko’s sake, but for the safety of his fellow Jaegers. Hoping to take her off guard, he asked her, “Will you go to lunch with me?”

Ryoko seemed taken aback by the suggestion. “You want to go to lunch with me?”

Yuliy said, “Dorothea left us some money. She said that I should take you to lunch.”

The disappointment she had learning that Yuliy had not wanted to take her out on his own volition was a sign to Ryoko that she really needed to cool her jets. Outwardly, she smiled broadly and replied, “Well, I won’t say no to a free lunch. I’ll get cleaned up and meet you at the door in a few minutes.”

After nodding his acknowledgement, Yuliy watched her turn and retreat into the house. Then he headed upstairs to change out of his sweaty clothes and put his staff away. He briefly considered bringing it with him, but decided that it would probably attract unwanted attention from civilians and vampires alike. Besides, he did well enough with an improvised weapon at the cellphone repair shop that he felt comfortable leaving it behind… For now.

* * *

Once they had their lunch and sat down to eat in the University cafeteria, Ryoko asked Yuliy more in-depth questions about his martial arts studies, which he did not seem completely averse to answering. Then she explained her own background in Japanese techniques, and remarked on how different their two methods seemed to be. Yuliy had canted his head to one side, food paused halfway between his plate and his mouth and asked, “Why do you say that?”

“Well, for example,” Ryoko began, leaning back and looking up toward the ceiling as she tried to find the right words. “While I studied  _ kendo _ , we focused on perfecting the forms. To win tournaments you have to make sure your stances, your swings, even your uniform are  _ just _ right.” She thought back to her awards on the wall of her bedroom, but decided against bragging to Yuliy about it. “I don’t mean to say that  _ kendo _ is just about winning tournaments, though. A lot of people get into it for the exercise or the discipline. My mom and my teacher really emphasized how important it was to preserve our history.” 

“I see,” Yuliy replied, and resumed eating.

Ryoko felt the awkward silence stretch out between them and fought the urge to bring up Fallon’s strange documents. She cleared her throat and instead asked, “Do you, um, have anything like that?” Yuliy didn’t seem to understand her question, so she clarified, “Like, do you still practice anything you used to do… Back in Dogville?”

Yuliy’s eyes briefly flitted from her face to something in the distance, then back down to his plate. “No,” he said quietly. Ryoko began to fear that she had upset him when he did not say anything more, but then he added, “I was very young when I left that place. I don’t remember much at all.”

Ryoko’s expression softened, and Yuliy shifted uncomfortably, subjected to her unknowing, sympathetic gaze. No one had looked at him with sadness in their eyes in a very long time, and he did not know how to feel about it. He cleared the last bit of rice off of his plate as she pulled out her phone, and he hoped that was an end to her questions.

It was not. Frowning, Ryoko raised her phone up and showed him the screen--she had opened an online encyclopedia and looked up Dogville, with apparently useless results. “That’s strange,” she said. “I can’t find anything about Dogville… Where did you say it was again?”

Yuliy furrowed his brows and Ryoko thought that he might refuse to tell her. Then he said, “I’m not sure.” He studied the phone screen, realizing he had never considered trying to seek out information on Dogville on his own before now. It didn’t seem like it would matter since everyone and everything was gone.

Still puzzled, Ryoko began to try a different search engine when Yuliy spoke again. “Can you…” He hesitated, met her eyes again, and asked, “Can you find anything about… The Ark of Sirius?”

Ryoko looked surprised, then answered, “Oh, sure.” It only took a few seconds for the results to appear, but she wasn’t sure if they were what he had in mind. She offered her phone to him again. “Is this..?”

His fingers brushed the back of Ryoko’s hand as Yuliy took her phone and scanned the web page. He couldn’t tell if it was very helpful either. Sensing his bemusement, Ryoko asked, “What is it? Maybe we could refine the search…”

“I don’t know,” Yuliy said, frustrated. He thought back to what Dorothea told him the night before. “I think it’s a story, from Dogville.”

“Oh, like a legend?” Ryoko asked brightly. She plucked her phone from his hands and tapped her fingers a few times on the screen. “There isn’t a lot but it looks like there’s a book on folktales from Asia that mentions a mythical tribe called the Sirius… Could that be it?”

Before Ryoko could give him her phone, Yuliy came around the table to stand behind her chair and peer intently over her shoulder. Ryoko swallowed, hoping that he did not notice the flush creeping over her cheeks. “Here, it’s called  _ Creation Myths of Asia _ . It was written by an English literature professor and published just a few years ago.”

“How do we find it?” Yuliy asked quickly. 

Ryoko turned to look at him, surprised that he had asked. “Well, we’re at a University,” she answered. “We should go to the library.”

They cleaned up their lunch trays and left the cafeteria. Taijin University’s library was in a recently renovated building at the center of campus, with huge glass windows that flooded its interior with natural light. Inside it was peacefully quiet, and Ryoko felt nostalgic at the sight of students studying diligently alone or in small groups. They were directed to the reference desk on the third floor, where a cheerful library sciences student looked for  _ Creation Myths of Asia _ in the collection. 

“We have one copy, in English, but it was checked out last week,” she told them. “Do you want to be notified when it’s available?”

Ryoko glanced at Yuliy, who looked troubled.

“Actually, we’re looking for information on something called the Ark of Sirius,” she said. “Do you know if you have other books here that might help us?”

“Certainly,” the librarian smiled. “I can see here that one of the works cited in  _ Creation Myths _ is a publication called  _ A Study of Visual Storytelling in Sirius Textiles _ .” She looked up from the screen and raised her eyebrows. “Does that sound like something you would be interested in?”

Ryoko looked at Yuliy again, who shrugged. She faced the librarian and said, “That sounds like a good start.”

The librarian hummed as she scrolled through something on her screen. “Okay, let’s see here, the author is...oh, my!” 

Taken aback, Ryoko asked, “Is something wrong?”

The librarian cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “No, nothing is wrong, it’s only…” She hesitated. “The author, Dr Akasaka, used to be head of the Anthropology Department here at Taijini.”

That should have been promising, but the way the librarian’s demeanor changed told Ryoko that something was, in fact, very wrong. “That’s good,” she said hopefully. “That must mean you have tons of copies, right?”

“I’m afraid not, Miss,” the librarian answered. “You see, Doctor Akasaka was… He left the University a few years ago. I don’t want to get into it, but Taijini would rather not be associated with him or his work.” She grimaced awkwardly as Ryoko’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. She could not imagine what had happened to cause the school to cut ties with Akasaka so drastically. 

A strange expression came over Yuliy’s face. His eyes seemed to focus on something far away, as if he was trying to remember something but could not quite piece it together. Silently, he turned and began walking away from the reference desk as the librarian began typing something else on her computer. Ryoko started after him, but the librarian called, quietly, “Wait, Miss!”

Ryoko looked back to see the librarian offering her a notecard with something written hastily along the top. “Here,” the other woman said with a sympathetic smile. “We might not have the book anymore, but the Tokyo Metropolitan Library does. This is the reference number. I hope that it helps you find what you’re looking for.”

Grateful, Ryoko thanked the librarian and then hurried after Yuliy. She lost him until she left the building, and spotted him stalking along the path toward the Annex. She shouted his name as she jogged after him, but he did not seem to hear her until she caught up with him and impulsively grabbed his sleeve. His far-off look faded as he faced Ryoko, who was more embarrassed by how winded she was after her short sprint than by their close proximity.

“Yuliy, wait,” she wheezed, even though he had stopped walking. She waved the notecard at him. “We still have a chance to find Dr Akasaka’s book. It’s at the Tokyo Metropolitan Library.” She met his eyes and found his expression impossible to read. “I mean, only if you want to keep looking.”

Yuliy’s thoughts were racing; there was no doubt in his mind that the Akasaka Mamoru who had written about the Sirius was the same man that had been apprehended by the Organization for aiding Vampires in their effort to invade Japan three years earlier. If his link to the Vampires went back even further, he could have had something to do with the massacre that had wiped out Yuliy’s entire village. There was no way Yuliy could know for sure, unless he found Akasaka… or Willard. The Professor would have known about Akasaka’s link to the Sirius and Taijini University, but why had he never told Yuliy?

He was never going to find out by just standing here. Ryoko was still waiting for an answer. 

“Yes,” he said, unconsciously balling his hand into a fist. “Will you help me?”

“I will,” Ryoko replied with a nod. Then a trio of students walked by, laughing about something that had nothing to do with her, and she let go of his sleeve. Perhaps she had been too hasty to agree--but the hurt and helplessness in Yuliy’s eyes made it easy for her to push the thought of returning to work out of her mind. Uncovering his past, even in this roundabout way, would be worth a few nights playing catch-up for the Saito Fund. After all, if Ryoko’s mother had still been alive, this would have been exactly what she wanted.

* * *

  
  


14:30, Haneda Airport International Terminal

Tanaka Eizo sat in the driver’s seat of a large black luxury sedan in the arrival pick-up line, uncharacteristically anxious about being out in daylight despite the car’s deeply tinted windows, his sunglasses, his formal black suit, and copious layers of sunscreen he had applied before leaving out on this errand. Nothing terrible had immediately befallen him despite the unnatural hour, and it had even been a little exciting to emerge into the waking world, before he had nearly died a second death of boredom while trapped in midday traffic. 

He checked his wristwatch and noted that his appointment should have gotten off the plane almost an hour ago; could they still be held up in customs? He doubted it, since his superiors had connections that made getting through red tape a breeze for those they considered their friends--and a nightmare for people they called their enemies. As a lackey, Tanaka fell somewhere in between, a victim to the whims of his masters almost as often as he had been rewarded by them. Some days, he wondered if the inhuman strength and immortality was really worth the cost of being treated as disposable, but always, he knew that he had no other choice.

Tanaka was a Vampire thrall, one of nearly a hundred that served the fickle Royals that could come and go from Tokyo whenever they pleased. He had been human once, a gangster with no family and no friends. After getting caught smuggling guns into Japan he had been imprisoned, and then stabbed in the gut by a rival gang member while awaiting trial. He should have died, but the prison doctor had offered him a second chance at life--a life of slavery to a race of monstrous man-eaters. It didn’t seem much different from what he was already doing with his time, and anything seemed better than death.

The passenger door opened and Tanaka scowled as another very pale man slid into the seat beside him. He had no luggage and dressed like an aging rock star, though Tanaka would have guessed that he was barely into his twenties. 

“Who are you?” Tanaka demanded. 

“Mikhail Jirov,” said the man. He gave his cranky chauffeur a slow once-over and smirked. “Thanks for the warm welcome, Tanaka.” 

Tanaka took in Mikhail’s white pallor, red eyes, and generally lifeless demeanor with no small amount of confusion. “You’re not a Royal,” he said. “How did you..?”

“No, I’m not a Royal,” Mikhail drawled in passable Japanese. “I’m a special case, but I won’t bore you with the details.” He adjusted his seat so that it leaned back and shut his eyes with a sigh. “Are we going to wait around here all day?”

Clenching his jaw, Tanaka put the car into gear and pulled quickly away from the curb. He wasn’t paid to ask questions, but he had more than a few for the foreign stranger that probably wasn’t even willing to answer them. For one, he understood that the laws regarding the abilities of thralls were quite strict; for one, unlike Royals, it was very difficult for less powerful vampires to cross moving water without the liberal application of grave dirt, which made international travel nearly impossible. They also suffered immensely from direct sunlight, unless adequately protected, but this man appeared unfazed by his time outside. Even for an unnatural vampire freak, he was pretty weird.

Tanaka drove, as ordered, through the city to the Shiodome City Center without sharing another word with Mikhail. He sighed with relief as they passed into the cool, dark parking garage under the neighboring block. His passenger smirked and said, “What’s the matter, Tanaka? Scared of a little sunlight?”

Tanaka pulled into a reserved spot and realized he was gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. He scowled sourly at Mikhail, but did not answer. Then they left the car and walked through the garage into the basement of the City Center through a nondescript door that Tanaka opened with an electronic key card. They entered onto a white, sterile hallway lined with several unmarked doors that Mikhail glanced over as they passed. Finally, he asked, “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” Tanaka answered stiffly, removing his sunglasses and sliding them into his breast pocket. “I don’t even know why you’re here. Nobody tells the peons anything.”

Mikhail quirked one eyebrow, then heard a shout from a corridor to their left. The door at the end flew open and another thrall dressed identically to Tanaka stumbled out, pursued by a disfigured man in a blood-splattered lab coat. He screamed, “These samples are useless! I can’t do anything with a cadre of crisped corpses! I need them fresh! FRESH!” 

He hurled a severed arm after the thrall, who had already pushed past Tanaka and out the door to the garage. The arm bounced floppily along the floor until it came to a stop at Mikhail’s feet. With a disgusted sneer, Mikhail kicked it back toward the man in the lab coat and demanded, “What the fuck are you up to now, Klarwein? Robbing graves?”

The old creep stopped, his one eye wide. “Mikhail!” He exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“Quality check,” Mikhail replied dryly, his contempt for Klarwein clear. “Orders from Yevgraf to make sure you’re not getting up to anything that would disturb the peace.”

Klarwein’s eye sparkled. He leapt forward to look around and behind Mikhail excitedly “Master Yevgraf! Is he with you? Did he ask about me?”

“No,” Mikhail said, placing a hand on the top of Klarwein’s bald head and shoving the man aside. He went into the door behind the mad scientist as Klarwein sputtered indignantly.

“Impossible! Master Yevgraf would not forget his most loyal, most devoted servant!” Klarwein wailed. He followed Mikhail, and Tanaka, with nothing else to do, trailed behind. They stepped into Klarwein’s lab, which was significantly darker, smellier, and more horrifying than the rest of the basement that they had seen. Metal tables were scattered around the room, covered in human remains in varying stages of decomposition. Shelves lined most of the walls, loaded with jars of pickled people parts. On the fourth wall were several flat screen monitors, connected by dangling wires to computers and switchboards that were smeared by Klarwein’s bloody handprints. The screens flickered through videos of the city outside, recorded from high vantage points, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Then, through another open door, Mikhail could see a room not unlike a hospital morgue, with wheeled gurneys lined up in front of large metal drawers that undoubtedly stored bodies that Klarwein used for his experiments. 

He turned to Klarwein, untroubled by most of what he had discovered since it seemed pretty on par for the vampires’ one-man R&D department. The screens and computers, however, puzzled him, since he had never known Klarwein to utilize electronics in his work before. He waved a hand at the wall of monitors and asked, “What’s all this supposed to be?”

Klarwein’s skinless lips curled to reveal a toothy yellow smile. “Oh, this?” He responded coyly. “Thanks to Master Kershner, I’ve been able to take on my most ambitious project yet!”

“Voyeur videos?” Mikhail suggested dryly. “I always knew you were a pervert.”

“No!” Klarwein shrieked. “You ignorant fool!” He scuttled across the lab and pressed some keys on the switchboard. The videos disappeared, replaced by computer-generated images of square boxes filled with wires and computer boards. “This, this is going to change everything!”

He turned, grinning wildly at Mikhail and Tanaka, and continued, “No more hiding in the shadows for old Klarwein, or Kershner, or anyone of us anymore!” He raised his hands over his head. “You must tell Master Yevgraf that soon, Kershner will bring this entire city to its knees. Then, after Tokyo falls, the rest of the world will soon follow!”

Mikhail studied the images on the monitors and frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Klarwein began to cackle. “While the elders turn to dust in their crumbling castle, we will finally reveal ourselves as the masters of the earth and the stinking masses! And it will all be thanks to me!”

Mikhail sighed. “I don’t need to stand here and listen to you stroke yourself, Klarwein. I’ll just Yevgraf know that you’re up to your usual bullshit that’s bound to blow up in your face.”

He walked out of the lab with Tanaka as Klarwein snarled after them, “I’ll never understand why the Master favors a half-wit half-breed like you!” The scientist bent over to pick up his discarded arm and shook it at them. “Just you wait! I’ll return to his right hand once we’ve restored the natural order!”

Mikhail appeared to pay Klarwein no mind as he walked down the hall, away from the garage. Tanaka did not know what the demented doctor was talking about either, but was relieved to be out of that lab. Like most of the thralls in the Japanese arm of Kershner’s organization, he had been turned by receiving a blood transfusion administered by Klarwein, and then woke up in a refrigerated drawer in the basement of the City Center. He tried to avoid returning there as much as possible, though he often ran gruesome errands on the bad doctor’s behalf. 

He was so preoccupied with the morbid circumstances of his rebirth that he nearly walked into Mikhail, who had stopped in front of a door that had been haphazardly labeled BREAK ROOM. Cautiously he tried the knob and stepped inside.

It was a small, bare concrete room that had once been a utility closet. It still smelled strongly of cleaning chemicals. A card table and four chairs now filled the center of the room, while a mini fridge sat against one wall and a flat screen television was mounted on another. Mikhail glanced around the space and remarked, “Cozy.” Then he pulled a chair back from the table, the legs scraping noisily across the bare grey floor, and sat with his feet propped up on the table. Tanaka, still puzzled about Mikhail’s presence and purpose in Tokyo, crossed to the mini fridge and pulled out a small plastic hospital bag of blood. He offered one to Mikhail, who shook his head. Then Tanaka pulled out a metal folding straw with one end filed to a point from a keychain in his pocket and stuck it unceremoniously into the blood bag. There was a small splatter across the table as he sat down heavily and sucked.

Tanaka hated the cold cow’s blood that they stocked in this fridge. He much preferred it hot and fresh from the source. He also preferred it to be human, but his superiors reserved that privilege for themselves while forcing their grunts to subsist on the bare minimum. It really wasn't that different than the life he had before he died.

Mikhail and Tanaka eyed each other for several suspicious moments before the door to the break room burst open and another thrall stomped inside. Mikhail recognized him as the same one that Klarwein had berated when they had first arrived in the basement. He strode over to the mini fridge, threw open the door, snatched up a handful of blood bags and then kicked the fridge closed again. Then he sat down between Mikhail and Tanaka, snarling, “I can’t believe that guy. He wants me to go out and bring him a dozen fresh bodies like they’re in the cooler at the fuckin’ corner store! If he has a problem with a few grill marks then maybe they shouldn’t be goin’ around blowin’ people up!”

He growled like an animal and tore into a blood bag with his teeth, noisily sucking out the congealed contents without caring about the mess he made and then wiping his face on the sleeve of his suit. Tanaka watched Mikhail study the other thrall with clear disgust, and suggested, “C’mon, Kuratake, use a napkin.”

Kuratake responded by violently squeezing his near-empty blood bag and shouting back, “Shut the fuck up, Tanaka! Can’t a man eat in peace? You aren’t even supposed to be here today.”

Tanaka sighed and shrugged. He flicked his red eyes toward Mikhail, and Kuratake turned as if noticing the third vampire for the first time. He whirled back toward Tanaka and asked, “Who’s the pretty boy?”

Mikhail answered, “My name is Jirov. Quality check from headquarters.”

Kuratake’s ugly mug twisted in confusion. “Headquarters? I thought this was headquarters.”

Tanaka, growing more embarrassed by the minute, snapped, “In Tokyo, dumbass! This guy is European!”

“Don’t call me a dumbass!” Kuratake roared, waving another bag of blood at Tanaka. “I can see that!” He faced Mikhail again. “So do you work for Kershner?”

Mikhail scoffed. “No. I work for Kershner’s boss.”

Kuratake’s sour expression brightened. “Ah. I get it!” 

Tanaka doubted that he did.

Kuratake leaned closer to Mikhail and lowered his voice to a rumble. “As long as you’re here, Jirov, I have some serious complaints about management.” 

Tanaka started. “Now wait a second, Kuratake…”

“No! I won’t wait!” Kuratake bit into another bag of blood and talked with his mouth full. “Maybe you’re used to just rolling over and letting them step all over you, but I’m looking out for number one no matter what!” He turned back to Mikhail. “Kershner sure as shit won’t do it. Three of us have gotten axed in a week and we just have to sit here and take it!”

Flecks of cold cow’s blood sputtered from Kuratake’s mouth as he ranted. Mikhail’s eyebrow twitched on his otherwise apathetic face, and he removed his boots from the table. “What are you talking about?” He asked, sounding bored.

“I’m talking about the Jaegers!” Kuratake bawled. “We could crush them if we wanted--but Kershner’s orders are to stand down!”

“Ah, yes, I had heard there were Jaegers in Tokyo,” Mikhail said. “Are they active? How many are there?”

“Active! They already got Abe, Ryo, and Kobayashi!” 

“The Hyakko Party got Kobayashi!” Tanaka interjected.

“Those morons wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in Hell against Kobayashi!” Kuratake replied. “I’m telling you, the Jaegers got him!”

Mikhail looked between the two arguing thralls, smiling sardonically. “The what party?”

“The Hyakko Party,” Tanaka groaned. “It was just a small gang of middle-aged, paranoid nationalists that wanted to expose Kershner and ALMA as a threat to security, or something. They’ve been taken care of.” He jerked his thumb toward the door. “You saw what was left of them in the lab.”

Raising his eyebrows, Mikhail remarked, “Sounds to me like you’ve turned Tokyo into a war zone. How has the greater public not found out what’s going on down here?”

“Because Kershner has his fangs in the police and the media,” Tanaka explained. “He’s all but officially running the show at NTC.”

“What’s the NTC?”

“Naoe Telecommunications,” Tanaka elaborated. “A national news and media company.” He pointed at the ceiling. “They’re upstairs.”

Mikhail whistled. “That would do it.”

“Fuck Kershner!” Kuratake pounded his fist on the table. “He’s not doing me any favors keeping this shit off the news! What about the fucking Jaegers!?”

“Are you scared, Kuratake?” Mikhail asked smoothly. “You said yourself, you know where they are. Why don’t you go and take care of them?”

Kuratake shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not scared of the Jaegers,” he growled. 

“What is it then? Kershner?” Mikhail smiled cruelly. “That man is getting too big for his britches, even for a Royal.” He slid his gaze over to Tanaka. “I can’t do anything for you about Kershner, but I can help you get rid of those Jaegers.”

“Huh? How?” Kuratake asked, his mouth hanging open stupidly.

Mikhail replied, “Get a few of your friends together and tell them that tonight, we’ll clear them out the old fashioned way.”

* * *

  
  


Ryoko decided it would be more prudent to use public transportation to get to the Library, instead of calling on Jiro, who might report her truancy to her dad. When they first arrived at the train station, Ryoko saw that Yuliy was able to use the kiosks pretty well; surprised, she asked him, “Have you done this before?”

He looked at her for a long moment, then answered, “Yes, once.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but a station announcement cut him off, and he did not continue.

Yuliy seemed distracted during their hour and a half long journey from Machida to Minato. He stared out of the train window while Ryoko used her phone to look up the disgraced Doctor Akasaka, and she was disturbed by what she found. He appeared as an unassuming scholar in photographs, but Akasaka had been deeply involved in a smuggling ring, using his University contacts to bring valuable artifacts of unknown provenience into Japan. According to the few news articles she could find, Tokyo Police had been able to recover just a fraction of what Akasaka had squirreled into the country before it had disappeared into the black market. A few journalists speculated that he sold the items to wealthy crime lords or shady billionaires who also paid for his legal defense. 

Ryoko was almost inclined to believe their theory, since interest in the story died before Akasaka went to trial. She could not figure out what his ultimate fate had been--but she did understand why she had been sent to scrutinize the Anthropology Department’s records so closely. Doctor Akasaka certainly did not work alone during his illicit import activities, and it was Ryoko’s duty to ensure that the money her father’s company was granting the Department in her mother’s name was not going to be used to revive the smugglers’ business. 

She looked up from her phone as they pulled into Shinjuku Station, and touched Yuliy’s sleeve to get his attention. “We’ll transfer here,” she told him, and he nodded. Their next train was standing room only.

They stood facing on either side of a pole, awkwardly careful not to touch or look at each other. Yuliy found himself feeling almost glad that Ryoko was close enough that the floral scent of her shampoo was stronger than the smell of the people pressing in on all sides, but it did not distract him from his solemn contemplation of what Akasaka could possibly have to do with his past. A few minutes after they boarded, as if she could read his mind, Ryoko looked up and said to him, “So, I looked up Akasaka and found out why the University threw out all of his books.”

Yuliy looked down and focused intently on her face as Ryoko told him a quick summary of what she had read. His expression grew stormy, and Ryoko concluded, “There’s nothing about where he is now, which I think is pretty strange.” She hesitated, then asked, “He used to work at the Anthropology Department, up until 2014. Did… Did the Professor know him?”

Now Yuliy was the subject of Ryoko’s clear gaze, but he could not determine what answer she was hoping he would give her. So he told her the truth. “I don’t know,” he said. “I knew that the Professor came to Japan three years ago because he was offered a job here. Perhaps that was after Akasaka was caught.”

“I guess that would make sense,” Ryoko said, pressing a finger to her mouth in thought. “There would have been a vacancy in the Department following Akasaka’s scandal, and the University would want to move on from that as quickly and quietly as possible.”

Her movement brought Yuliy’s attention to Ryoko’s lips, something that he likely would not have noticed if he had not already been so close to her, and so invested in the topic of their conversation. He moved his eyes to her phone and asked, “Did you see anything about what he studied?”

“Cultural anthropology,” Ryoko said, shuffling closer to show Yuliy her screen in one hand. Cautiously she let go of the pole to scroll through a short profile that one news agency had compiled on the plundering professor and added, “It says here that he studied the development of remote and nomadic cultures.” She raised her eyebrows and looked up at Yuliy again. “I guess that explains why he wrote a book about the Sirius. From what you’ve said, it sounds like Dogville was pretty isolated.”

Before Yuliy could reply, the train slowed as it entered another station. Ryoko lost just enough of her balance that she tipped forward, shuffling her feet awkwardly to stop herself at the same time that Yuliy instinctively reached an arm out to catch her. For a short, heart-stopping moment, Ryoko’s left cheek pressed against Yuliy’s right shoulder and his hand was warm on the small of her back. It occurred to Ryoko as she stumbled into him that it was like something out of a cheesy romance manga, but as she felt the hard muscles of Yuliy’s body move beneath the thin sheath of his clothes, she also remembered how he had looked in the garden that afternoon, and what she had read in Fallon’s notes the night before. 

Unreasonably panicked, Ryoko pushed herself away from him with both hands and stammered, “S-sorry!” Then she took a step toward the train door and the stream of people flowing out onto the platform. “This is our stop!”

Yuliy followed Ryoko, wondering why she had suddenly looked so frightened on the train. It had only been a little fall and she hadn’t been hurt. Then he realized where he had seen that look on her face before--after he had killed the two vampires in the electronics shop in Akihabara. 

The fear was gone and her demeanor had returned to normal by the time Ryoko and Yuliy stepped out of the train station. It was a short walk to the Library, which was surrounded by a peaceful, tree-filled park on three sides. Ryoko led him inside and retrieved badges for them to use at the front desk, then brought Yuliy to a computer terminal to search for Akasaka’s book. Like the librarian at the University had promised, they did have a copy of _ Visual Storytelling _ available at the Metropolitan, and Ryoko printed out a small map that would show them where to find it.

As they walked through the stacks, Ryoko purposefully pushed the feeling of Yuliy’s cotton shirt against her face out of her mind. She wasn’t so single that she was going to start developing a crush on the only guy her own age that she interacted with on a regular basis. That definitely wasn’t why she was here instead of at work. And she wasn’t so delusional to believe that Yuliy and the rest of the Anthropology Department were secretly vampire hunters, no matter how convincing Fallon’s box of props had been!

She must have been making some sort of face, because Yuliy asked her quietly, “Are you all right, Ryoko?” 

With a start, she looked at him and quickly away again, unsettled by how closely he seemed to be staring at her. It reminded her of how strangely everyone on the Department had been behaving on Monday. Knowing what she did now about the Akasaka and the history of the Department’s involvement with the smuggling ring, she had to be alert for anything suspicious even if she wanted to believe that Yuliy and the others could never do something like that. She answered too cheerfully, “Yes, of course!” 

Yuliy did not say anything else as they turned into the aisle where they would find Akasaka’s book. Ryoko scanned the shelves until she spotted the title just above her head. “There!” She said triumphantly, and pointed. Yuliy reached up and slid the book out from among its neighbors gently, almost reverently, and held it in both hands as they examined the cover. It was a greyscale photo of a dark woven rug with the title and author’s name printed over it in white. The back was dark blue and bare but for the publisher’s information. To Ryoko, it looked like the book had never been touched, and the spine cracked as Yuliy opened it to a random page.

He sucked in a breath, and his eyes grew wide. 

Ryoko watched him study the page with an unreadable expression. She looked down to see what he had discovered; the entire right page was a color photo of a dark blue rug, similar to the book’s cover, that had a spiral woven out from the center to its edge. Around the border were solid triangles of various colors that pointed in different directions without any obvious pattern. More triangles, in white, were laid over the spiral in different sizes. Beside the photo on the left page was a hand-drawn diagram of the spiral and the triangles laid over it, and beneath it was a written explanation. 

Yuliy’s hands were trembling. He held the book out to Ryoko and asked urgently, “What does this say?”

He couldn’t read Japanese well enough to read Akasaka’s work on his own. “Let’s find somewhere to sit,” Ryoko suggested, resting a hand on his arm reassuringly. He nodded and followed her to a quiet corner with a couch. Soon they were both bent over the book, with Yuliy holding it up and flipping through the pages of photographs as Ryoko read out the descriptions. 

“This one is a star map,” she said, running her finger delicately over the spiral and tapping one of the triangles. “It says here that in ancient times, the Sirius believed that their ancestors came to Earth from Heaven, and that one day they would be able to return.” It was a sweet sort of story, she thought, and glanced up at Yuliy to gauge his reaction. She asked him, “Do you remember anything like this from when you were little?”

After a long pause, Yuliy shook his head. “No,” he answered. “Those were the stories the old men would tell, but I didn’t care. My brother…” He caught himself, and stopped.

Ryoko shifted her weight so that her leg pressed against Yuliy’s. “You had a brother..?” She asked, trying to encourage him to continue.

Yuliy swallowed. Ryoko thought for a moment that he would not reply. Then he said, “Yes. I had an older brother. He would listen to the old men and pay attention to their stories. He thought it was important for him to learn the ancient knowledge after my father left.”

The more she learned about Yuliy, the more Ryoko’s heart hurt for him. She turned another page and said, “These kinds of stories help us to remember the people who are gone.” She smiled sadly and added, “It keeps them close, even if they haven’t been with us for a very long time.”

There was another long pause, and then Yuliy said, “Like your mother.”

Ryoko smiled up at him. “Yes, like my mother.” 

The next page had a black-and-white photo of women sitting in a circle outside, spinning wool into yarn. The women ranged in age from very old to young teen, with different sized piles of carded wool beside them. The older women, with their experience, seemed to be working quickly and easily, while the younger women were slower but determined. Ryoko pointed to the photograph and asked, “Do you remember your mother ever doing anything like this?”

Yuliy shook his head. “No. She wasn’t allowed.”

Ryoko blinked, not understanding. He explained, “She was an outsider. She was not allowed to touch the wool before it was carded. They believed… They believed that an outsider would destroy its protective powers. But she could weave with it, and she made us clothes.”

The caption under the picture corroborated what Yuliy had said--that the Sirius treated the wool from their animals as sacred and life-giving but delicate and dangerous to touch. Intrigued by the small detail that Yuliy had let slip, Ryoko asked, “If your mother wasn’t from Dogville, where was she from?”

Yuliy thought about it, and answered, sounding surprised, “I remember...She was from Japan.”

Ryoko’s face lit up and she faced Yuliy more directly. “She was Japanese? Really? Maybe she has family here! We could look them up!”

Yuliy answered with a shrug. “Perhaps. She didn’t tell us that much about her life before Dogville. But even if she did…” He tightened his grip on the book. “I want to find out what the Ark of Sirius is first.”

“Okay,” Ryoko said, mentally tucking what she had learned away for later. As they flipped through the book, they learned a good deal about the Sirius’s unique wool harvesting and weaving techniques, and the symbolism they used in their patterns to represent their beliefs. Offhandedly, Ryoko said, “These blankets and clothes are so beautiful in pictures, but I bet they’re even more impressive in person.”

Yuliy’s face hardened. “They were.”

But they were all gone now. Torn to pieces and burnt to ashes by monsters so long ago.

They finished Akasaka’s book without learning any more about what the Ark could be. After they replaced it on the shelf, Ryoko suggested that Yuliy ask a librarian if they had any other books on the Sirius people while she went to look up something else. She logged into a public computer and searched: AURORA HOTEL HOI AN 2010.

She was rewarded with several links to online articles about a terrorist attack at a high-end hotel in Hoi An, Vietnam, on the same dates that Fallon had listed in his report. It had been an unspeakable tragedy; armed radicals had raided the hotel during a party and murdered the guests in cold blood when their demands to meet with the local government had not been met. There were follow-up articles on a memorial erected to honor the victims, and harsher security policies were voted into law to prevent such an unspeakable act of violence from ever happening again. Nobody mentioned anything about Vampires… Because of course they wouldn’t. Vampires were not real.

Ryoko did eventually find an odd piece, written by a Philippine investigative journalist several months following the Hoi An massacre. He had been interviewing the families of victims, mostly young women, and found it unusual that so many had reported their daughters missing or kidnapped before they had turned up dead at that hotel. It stank of human trafficking, he said, but he did not get far before he had been contacted by representatives of the Vietnamese government and discouraged from going further.

Ryoko wondered how many of Fallon’s reports would align with true events if she dared to look them up. She thought it would be strange, bordering on the disrespectful, if he used the murders of real people as a backdrop for his fiction. 

Yuliy came up from behind her, having turned up nothing else at the reference desk. Ryoko frowned apologetically, but he only shrugged. Glancing at the time, Ryoko gasped aloud, shocked and disappointed that she had allowed the day to get away from her… again. It was a quarter after five. At least she could expect Dorothea to be at the Annex to help her fill out Philip’s form by the time they returned. She looked over her shoulder at Yuliy to tell him, “Just a second, I’ll log out.”

His eyes were on her screen where she still had articles about the Aurora open. She heard him inhale sharply and saw recognition light up his eyes at the photos of the hotel--but he said nothing, and turned away. Ryoko assured herself that it didn’t mean anything. He probably just thought she was weird for looking up something so morbid. She finished logging out and stood up, smiling. “Ready to go?”

They turned in their badges and left the Library, then walked toward the train in amicable silence. As they joined the throng of other rush-hour travelers on an escalator up to the platform, Yuliy thought about why Ryoko could have been looking up news articles about the hotel in Hoi An. He would never forget the miserable failure of his first mission, and seeing the Aurora again had made his entire body tense with fear and anger. Ryoko wouldn’t know anything about that night--she had no reason to know, unless someone had told her. Again, he saw her eyes filled with fear on the subway, and the week before in the alley. She was supposed to have forgotten what she’d seen, and he was supposed to protect her from those terrible memories, but something was going wrong that he did not know how to stop. The Professor was right--she would be better off as far away from the Department as she could get.

Yuliy was glowering with his hands balled into fists at his side as he stood beside Ryoko on the platform. Seeing that he was obviously troubled, Ryoko cautiously touched his sleeve. “Yuliy? Are you-?”

He jerked his arm away suddenly, and Ryoko could have sworn she heard him make a noise not unlike an inhuman growl. “Hey!” She protested, taken off guard. “Are you okay?”

Yuliy set his jaw and answered stiffly, “Yes. Sorry.”

Ryoko side-eyed him suspiciously, but said nothing else as the train pulled up and they walked on board. An awkward silence stretched between them like an ocean until they transferred at Shinjuku, onto another crowded train that forced them to stand close together beside the car doors. After several stops had come and gone, she cleared her throat and nudged him again. “Yuliy,” she said softly once she had his attention. “I...I know we didn’t find what you were looking for, but I had a nice time today. With you.”

She smiled, and Yuliy felt like he would be sick. Ryoko wouldn’t say that to him if she knew what he had done. He swallowed hard and replied, “We shouldn’t do this again.”

That seemed to surprise her. “I’m sorry?”

“Thank you for your help,” he said hoarsely. “But you shouldn’t be around me anymore.”

Ryoko laughed humorlessly. “Where did this come from?” She asked. “What are you talking about?”

“You should leave the Department,” Yuliy hissed between his teeth. “It’s dangerous.”

Ryoko was stunned, and for a horrible moment she thought that all of the things she had read about in Fallon’s papers were true. Then she shook her head and sighed, careful to keep her voice calm as she retorted, “Seriously? You’re unbelievable.”

Yuliy said nothing. Strangers glanced their way, intrigued by the drama they could hear unfolding, but Ryoko didn’t care. She continued, “Come on. We’re both adults here. If you don’t want to hang out anymore, just say so!” She glared up at Yuliy, who refused to meet her eye. “You don’t have to make up crazy excuses! ‘Dangerous’, yeah right.”

With her cheeks hot with embarrassment, Ryoko wondered what had caused Yuliy to turn so cold so suddenly. She wouldn’t believe it was something she had done or said, or that he was actually warning her to stay away for a real reason. He had to have some sort of insecurity or maturity problem, but she wasn’t going to make it her project to fix him. The rejection hurt less than knowing he had thought her stupid enough to believe his weird excuses.

They didn’t say anything else the rest of the train ride home, or when they got off in Machida. It was nearly seven now, and Ryoko considered going straight to her apartment--but Dorothea was expecting to meet with her, and she needed to get Philip’s form filled out. The sinking sun painted the sky with gorgeous streaks of red and orange, but they could not enjoy the walk back to the University. Ryoko strode ahead of Yuliy, her fury carrying her forward when she wanted to turn around and demand that Yuliy tell her the truth. 

A breeze passed over the University grounds as they approached the Annex. Behind her, Ryoko heard Yuliy call her name, and she stopped. 

He walked quickly to catch up to her, but his eyes were on the building in front of them. “Don’t go in there,” he said harshly.

“Would you cut the crap?” Ryoko snapped back. “I work here! You don’t have to like it, but don’t make it weird!”

Yuliy wasn’t listening. He pushed past her, sprinting up the front steps as she shouted at him to wait. He threw open the front door to find the entrance hall was dark and quiet--too quiet. There was an unmistakable stink in the air that set all of his nerves alight. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, Yuliy heard footsteps upstairs. There were far too many to be the Department’s usual residents, and as several hulking figures appeared on the landing, his fears were confirmed. Five thralls, wearing suits over their human disguises, leered down at him. They parted to allow one figure to come forward.

It was Mikhail.

He seemed just as surprised to see Yuliy as Yuliy was to see him, but only for a moment. Then he sneered, “What did I tell you, boys? These Jaegers are as loyal as dogs. They wouldn’t leave one of their own behind.” He was dragging something on the floor in his left hand, and now yanked it forward forcefully for Yuliy to see. It was Philip, bloody and unconscious, but alive. 

“Let him go, Mikhail!” Yuliy roared. 

“Sure,” Mikhail snickered. “But he won’t be any use to you now. Kid’s been through a lot today.” Cruelly, he hurled Philip down the stairs and the young man cried in agony as he bounced off the steps to the floor.

Behind Yuliy, the Annex’s front door opened again and Ryoko entered.

“Yuliy?” She called into the darkness. “Where are--oh my God! Philip!” She rushed forward to kneel at the foot of the stairs. Then she noticed the crowd on the second floor and cried, “What’s going on here?”

One of the thralls grunted. “Shit! Jirov, that’s the Naoe girl! We can’t--”

“I don’t care who she is!” Mikhail barked, still glaring daggers down at Yuliy, who felt nailed to the floor. “You have your orders, Tanaka. Tonight, everybody in this house dies.”


	5. Chapter Five

Tuesday 15 August 7:15 pm

“Tonight, everyone in this house dies.”

Ryoko struggled to comprehend everything that was happening around her. From the stranger barking orders on the landing to Philip’s crumpled body at the bottom of the stairs, her world had changed too quickly for her to keep up. She looked over her shoulder at Yuliy, hoping for some kind of explanation, but he was watching the pale man above them. 

“What are you doing here, Mikhail?” Yuliy shouted.

“I could ask you the same thing,” the stranger, Mikhail, replied. “I told you before that you were better off forgetting about your Jaeger friends. Now you can die here with them.”

_ Jaeger _ . Ryoko had seen that word before, in Fallon’s files. The Jaegers belonged to the mysterious Organization, and they were tasked with the dangerous job of seeking out and destroying vampires. But that couldn’t be possible… because vampires did not exist.

Philip groaned weakly, trying to tell her something. Ryoko leaned down to hear him better. “Philip?”

He peered up at her through two swollen black eyes and hissed, “Get lost, Naoe.”

“You won’t hurt them,” Yuliy snarled. He was already planning his route to his room to retrieve his staff, but he couldn’t engage such a large group of enemies while he still had two noncombatants to worry about. “Ryoko, get out of here!”

To his surprise, she responded, “No! I can’t leave Philip--”

“That’s ENOUGH!” Roared Mikhail. He seized the front of one of the men beside him and pushed him down the stairs. The others whipped hand guns out from the inside of their jackets and opened fire on the Jaegers below.

Ryoko screamed and threw herself across Philip as Yuliy leapt over them both to engage the thrall stumbling down the stairs. The enemy swung at him but missed, and Yuliy punched him savagely in the stomach. Then he used the thrall as a shield against the hail of bullets as he ascended the stairs, keeping a firm hold on the man-shaped vampire’s throat. The vampire screamed in rage and pain as he was shot several times in the back and then hurled bodily back into the group, knocking them down and pinning them to the floor with his weight. His body grew stiff and stone like before beginning to crumble into ash.

Yuliy climbed the rest of the stairwell quickly. Mikhail jumped over the dogpile of angry thralls with a thin stiletto knife in his hand to block him, but Yuliy ducked under his outstretched arm and hurried quickly to his room at the far end of the hall. He slid across the floor to dig under his bed for his bag and instrument case. Mikhail was in his doorway an instant later.

“Trapped like a rat,” Mikhail hissed. Yuliy jumped to his feet, the scratched-up staff in one hand, and a long handmade scarf crumpled into the other. The end dragged on the floor as Yuliy took a defensive stance, catching Mikhail’s eye. Furious, he demanded to know, “Why do you still have that?”

Yuliy raised his staff toward his brother, “Because I won't forget, Mikhail! I won’t forget mother, I won’t forget our people…” He searched the other man's face for any sign that he had any loyalty at all to their lost tribe left, then decided to take a risk. “And I won’t forget the Ark.”

Mikhail’s eyes widened, and he grew still. Behind him, a vampire, the one he had called Tanaka, appeared.

“Jirov!” Tanaka shouted. He had lost his sunglasses and his suit was in disarray. “Jirov--the Naoe girl--”

“SHUT UP!” Mikhail whirled and plunged one of his knives into the side of Tanaka’s neck. The other vampire fell back, his blood spraying the walls and floor until he clapped his hands over the wound. He gurgled in shock and confusion while a pair of thralls who had been crowding the hall beside him shouted in outrage. They stepped over their fallen comrade with their guns trained on Mikhail.

* * *

Downstairs, three more thralls were descending on Ryoko. She was bent over now with her hands beneath Philip’s arms, trying to drag him toward Fallon’s office. From there, she thought, she could bar the doors and call the police. “Hang on, Philip,” she said shakily, but the men in suits seemed to have other ideas. 

The one in front was huge and hideous. He reached up to cast aside his sunglasses and reveal red, wrathful eyes that seemed to study Ryoko as if she were something he would like to eat. To her horror, he licked his lips and muttered, “It’s been so long since I’ve had a girl… A nice fresh girl…”

His mouth hung open and he started to drool. His too-long tongue tasted the air like a snake’s and he threw his gun away to make grabbing motions at her with his hands. The men behind him cackled, and Ryoko felt behind herself blindly for the door. Then another loud gunshot cracked the air, and the ugly man howled as his bottom jaw dangled by a few strands of muscle from the rest of his face. He whirled to face the front door where Dorothea stood with a high-caliber handgun and a rueful smile.

“Sorry I’m late, sweetheart,” she cooed, and fired again. The second man was knocked back by a bullet to the chest, but the third jumped forward with a ear-shattering war cry. Dorothea shot him too, but he did not go down; instead, both of the suited men still standing began to  _ change _ .

Their arms burst from the sleeves of their jackets, swollen with muscle, as their legs extended and bent in unnatural hunters’ crouches. The one who had been shot in the face snapped and gnashed his teeth, which had grown long and yellow as his face became ferocious and dog like. Ryoko screamed at the nightmarish sight, wrenching the door behind her open and hurling herself and Philip over the threshold. 

These were the creatures Fallon had written about. She had dug molds of those bone-crushing, flesh-tearing teeth in the box she had accidentally taken home. These were the monsters that Yuliy, the Professor, and the rest of the Department fought in those terrible stories. It was all  _ real _ .

Ryoko dropped Philip unceremoniously in front of the window and then began pushing one of the spare desks in front of the door. When it was done, she fell to her knees, listening to Dorothea’s gun continue to go off in the front hall, and the sounds of a scuffle upstairs. Her hands were shaking as she struggled to pull her phone out of her pocket and dial emergency services. Then Philip coughed, and she crawled to his side.

“What are you doing?” He groaned, reaching for her phone. “I told you to get out of here.”

“I have to call the police!” Ryoko answered, her voice high-pitched and hysterical. “There’s--there’s these  _ things _ \--”

Philip’s hand wrapped tightly on Ryoko’s wrist. “Do you really think the cops can help us with those monsters out there!?” He didn't give her a chance to answer. Instead, he used her arm as a lever to pull himself up and continue, “Do you remember what happened the last time you called the police in a situation like this?”

Ryoko opened and closed her mouth several times. “I don’t understand,” she finally said. “I never…”

“Yes, you did!” Philip wheezed, his expression manic. “You just have to remember!”

* * *

In Yuliy’s room, Mikhail moved with impossible speed to avoid a shot from the gun of a thrall that had watched him stab Tanaka. The window behind Yuliy shattered. Mikhail sank his knives into the other man’s sides, beneath his ribcage, and the vampire spewed blood all over the wooden floor before he crumbled into dust. The third thrall began to transform as he pushed through the doorway, but Yuliy’s quick-spinning blades sliced through his wrist and then his throat.

Yuliy turned to help his brother while his opponent perished, but Mikhail knocked the wind out of him with a sharp knee to his stomach. When he hit the floor, Mikhail kicked him again, and Yuliy lost his grip on his staff and scarf. 

Yuliy struggled to breath as Mikhail picked him up by the front of his shirt and snarled, “I told you if I saw you again, I would kill you.” His eyes were filled with helpless rage. “I told you to forget all of it. I tried to give you a chance to have a normal life!” He raised Yuliy up and seemed unaffected by his younger brother’s weak kicks. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

Instead of answering him, Yuliy demanded hoarsely, “What does it mean?” He hung onto his brother’s arm and tried to loosen his grasp. “What is the Ark of Sirius?”

Mikhail let out a wordless cry of fury and threw Yuliy out of the window.

* * *

Ryoko was going to be sick.

“You just have to remember,” Philip urged her again, his grasp on her wrist growing weaker. “Last Friday, with Yuliy, in Akihabara…”

But he didn't need to tell her where, or even when she had seen these monsters before. Like a nightmare recalled upon waking, it was coming back to Ryoko in disordered pieces, all of them more horrific than the last. The decapitated technician and the countertop covered in blood. The beast crouched in the darkness, its awful red eyes and too many teeth, and how scared she had been for her life. And Yuliy--who had known they were there, and destroyed them both, then left her alone to…

“Oh my God!” Ryoko sobbed. She lurched to her feet and turned away from Philip, who didn't seem to have anything more to say. She clutched her phone to her chest but made no move to call--she knew now what had happened last time, and what would probably happen again. The police had held her until Agatha, her father’s trusted assistant, had somehow gotten into her head and made her forget it all…

The door from the kitchen burst open and a slavering, slack-jawed monster roared into the office and lunged at Ryoko. With an answering shriek, she picked up the scanner from the desk and cracked the beast across the face. It stumbled back, stunned for just a moment, then slashed at her with both sets of cruel, curved claws. She scrambled away, regretting that she had already blocked off their only escape. There was no way she could get herself and Philip out through the window...

Ryoko used the chair in the corner to pull herself to her feet, and hurled the objects from Fallon’s occult collection at the monster. It didn't care, it only came at her slowly and confidently like a lion toward an injured gazelle. 

Finally Ryoko’s hand came around the hilt of the jeweled dagger and she pointed it at her foe. To her astonishment, the creature  _ laughed _ , a sound like spilled gravel, and swiped at her again. She dodged instinctively with a swift sidestep that had saved her a point in many kendo tournaments, and shouted as she threw the weight of her whole body behind a fear-fueled jab at its heart. 

The blade, dulled by time, scraped harmlessly against the monster’s tough hide. She only had a moment to process her dismay before it struck her with the back of one oversized hand and sent her sprawling to the floor. 

“Fresh...girl…” The creature growled. It opened its mouth wide and Ryoko felt its hot, fetid breath wash over her as she realized that she was about to die.

* * *

“Yuliy! Yuliy, wake up!”

He couldn't have been out for more than a minute, but Yuliy couldn’t immediately remember why he had been unconscious, or outside in the garden behind the Annex. Dorothea was shaking him urgently and the sound of approaching sirens was growing louder, which was usually the Jaeger’s cue to leave. Then he shot up and shouted, “Mikhail!”

“What? Who?” Dorothea asked, utterly bemused. Then a scream from inside the house caught both of their attention. “That was Ryoko!”

With adrenaline coursing through his veins, Yuliy rolled to his feet and ran through the back door into the Annex. The whole building was full with the stink of vampires and spilled blood, but he knew where the sound had come from. His mind felt separated from his body, as if he was watching something else take over and direct him to kill his enemies, to kill the undead wretches that had ruined his life and threatened his teammates, to kill anyone and anything that got in his way…

The door from the kitchen was knocked half off of its hinges as Yuliy barreled into Fallon’s office and tackled the vampire that was leering over Ryoko as if to swallow her whole. Taken completely by surprise, the beast yowled as Yuliy did the unthinkable and sank his own sharp teeth into its throat. The thrall sank its claws into Yuliy’s torso in an effort to rip him off, but the wild-eyed Jaeger would not be budged. Then the creature smashed into the desk, splitting it in two and raining splinters all over the room. 

Ryoko screamed again, covering her head, but dragged herself over to the unmoving Philip. “We have to go!” She begged him, but he did not respond. Only the slightest movement of his chest showed that he was still breathing at all. 

Dorothea appeared once more, gun in hand. “Get out of the way, Yuliy!” She shouted in the doorway, and he finally let go of his foe. The vampire reared on its hind legs and bellowed, but it became choking gargles as Dorothea packed his chest with lead.

Ryoko could hardly recognize Yuliy’s face. His eyes seemed lit from within by a cold and unnatural glow, and his expression was twisted by rage. Then Dorothea darted forward to seize one of Philip’s arms. She had a phone in her other hand and was shouting into it, “We’re going to need one of those ambulances, Philip’s in bad shape.” She looked up at Ryoko and told her, “Help me get him outside.” 

Dorothea took his head while Ryoko carried his legs and they started toward the kitchen. Yuliy still had not moved until Dorothea ordered, “Hey! Stop standing around! We’ve got to get out of here!”

Feeling as if he was re-entering his body after someone else had borrowed it, Yuliy shook his head and forced himself to focus on what they had to do next. He followed the others out from the kitchen, into the ruined entrance hall and out of the front door. The university grounds were empty but for a pair of bright headlights tearing across the grass toward them. It was an ambulance that rose up onto two wheels as it came to a shrieking stop, and to Ryoko’s utter astonishment, Jiro Akimoto opened the driver’s side door. 

“Mr Akimoto?” Ryoko said weakly as Jiro threw open the rear doors of the ambulance and helped Dorothea to get Philip onto the gurney inside. Didn’t he work for the NTC? What was he doing here? 

“We’ll explain everything later!” Dorothea said, hauling herself up into the driver’s seat. “Get in!”

Ryoko looked over her shoulder at Yuliy, who was staring into the Annex. On the porch was the pale man, the one Yuliy had called Mikhail. Creeping up behind him was one of the men in suits, his front covered in blood from a wound on his neck. Ryoko saw the glint of his gun as he raised it to the back of Mikhail’s head at the same time as Yuliy, who cried out to warn him.

Mikhail turned and wrapped a hand around Tanaka’s throat at the same time that the last thrall fired. The bullet whizzed harmlessly past him but struck Yuliy, who fell and slid across the grass. Ryoko screamed and threw herself to the ground beside him. She had no idea what to do--why would she?--and was afraid to touch Yuliy as he thrashed around. It was hard to tell where he had been struck as blood spread quickly over his clothes.

“There’s still more?” Dorothea shouted, leaping out of the ambulance and firing toward the Annex, but both of the vampires had already disappeared. Jiro moved to Yuliy’s other side and hauled him to the back of the ambulance, climbing in and then dragging the other man onto the floor beside Philip’s gurney. Yuliy fought like a wounded animal, the wild look returning to his face as he kicked at Jiro and pushed his hands away.

With obvious strain, Jiro said, “Miss Naoe, I will need your help to stop the bleeding.” He dug through the medical supplies stored on shelves and drawers on the ambulance walls until he found wrapped gauze. He pressed it to Yuliy’s chest with one hand as he dug in his inner jacket pocket with the other. Ryoko gasped when he pulled out a long, sinister-looking syringe. 

“Close those doors, we gotta go!” Dorothea shouted between the seats at Ryoko, who was standing, paralyzed, outside of the ambulance. “Are you coming with us?”

Yuliy was snarling and convulsing in pain, but the sound was frighteningly similar to the snapping and slobbering of those creatures, those  _ vampires _ , that had been a figment of her imagination less than thirty minutes ago. Then Jiro used his teeth to pull the cap off of the syringe and jab it into the side of Yuliy’s neck. Yuliy seized the front of Jiro’s jacket and smashed him into the side of Philip’s gurney, nearly knocking the younger man off. Jiro was obviously trying to overpower Yuliy without hurting him, but it was clear to Ryoko that he needed help. She scrambled up and into the ambulance to push Yuliy off of Jiro who quickly slammed the door closed behind her. Dorothea hit the gas, knocking all three of them to the floor. 

Jiro pointed Ryoko to the gauze over the left side of Yuliy’s chest and directed her to apply pressure in order to stop the bleeding. Again, Yuliy cried out in pain, but Ryoko straddled his stomach and pushed down with both hands as his thrashing became more subdued. Then he slowly closed his eyes.

“Yuliy?” Ryoko said fearfully. “Yuliy! Please don’t go!” She didn’t know anything about bullet wounds, but it seemed like he had been shot dangerously close to his heart. And there was so much blood everywhere, she was going to be sick from the smell...

“He’s been sedated,” Jiro said. Now he was crouched beside Philip’s gurney, using a utility knife to cut away the younger man’s clothes. Dorothea turned sharply and Jiro dropped the knife to avoid accidentally cutting his patient’s nose off as the ambulance lurched to one side.

“Sorry!” Exclaimed their distressed driver. She had put on the ambulance’s sirens to clear traffic but it had also attracted the attention of the other emergency personnel that had been gathering on the University grounds in response to calls of gunshots and screams at the Annex. Voices came over their ambulance’s radio demanding identification, but when they did not respond two police cars quickly peeled off in pursuit. As Dorothea turned to drive the wrong way down a narrow one-way back street, she waved a hand emphatically over the back of her seat and said, “Ryoko! Your phone!”

“What? Now?” Ryoko replied, flabbergasted.

“YES!” Dorothea demanded. Ryoko fumbled with blood-covered hands to get her phone from her pocket, then watched Dorothea hurl it out of the driver’s side window. When Ryoko protested, Dorothea only said, “We’ll explain later!”

Jiro continued attending diligently to Philip. First he strapped him onto the gurney so that he wouldn't fall off. Then he cautiously felt along the blonde boy’s cuts and bruises, until he touched something that woke Philip up enough to shout, “Get off of me! That fucking hurts!”

Jiro jerked his hands back but looked relieved. “It’s only a few broken ribs,” he remarked casually, as if commenting on the weather. “All things considered, I think you got off rather easy.” 

Philip turned his head to try and get his bearings; his eyes widened in surprise at Ryoko, then his face paled at the sight of Yuliy beneath her. “Holy shit,” he murmured. “What happened to him?” 

Jiro explained, “Yuliy has been shot.” He spoke to Dorothea, “We can’t treat him like this.”

“Yes--I know!” Dorothea said through gritted teeth. “There’s someone who can help, hang on.” She made another unpredictable turn, still trying to shake the police that were hot on their tail, and then pulled out a pay-as-you-go flip phone from her pocket. She dialed a number and then held the phone between her ear and her shoulder. Whoever answered didn’t seem happy that she called, but Dorothea wasted no time on pretenses. “Hey, yeah, it’s me—I know we agreed we wouldn’t make contact yet but we’re in some serious trouble! The kid’s been shot!” She was quiet for a moment, listening. Then she asked, “Our HQ’s been compromised--can’t we meet at your place? Shit! You have a better idea?”

Ryoko felt hot, desperate tears fill her eyes as she gazed down at Yuliy. She could hardly believe how badly this day had turned. An hour ago, her biggest problem had been wondering whether or not a boy liked her; now she was changing the gauze on his gunshot wound. She was up to her elbows in some kind of global cover-up that had nearly killed her-- _ twice! _ \--and probably would never stop until she was dead. 

As Ryoko hunched over Yuliy, feeling crushed by the weight of her fear and helplessness, she thought how vastly underqualified she was to handle the extraordinary situation she found herself in. Compared to the rest of the Department, who seemed to be motivated, well-equipped, thoroughly-trained warriors, she didn’t have a chance against their monstrous enemies…

Inspiration struck Ryoko suddenly, and she sat up like a shot. “Sagamihara!” She shouted at Dorothea.

“What!?” The other woman started, nearly dropping her phone.

“I know where we can go,” Ryoko continued. “We need to get to Sagamihara!”

* * *

Mikhail saw red as he mercilessly crushed Tanaka’s windpipe beneath his bare hands on the floor just inside the Annex. The other vampire tried to transform but died before he could finish, and then his horrible, inhuman visage crumbled to ash. Mikhail dug through his jacket to find something before it too disintegrated, then shook the loose material from his hands and stood up. The ambulance carrying his younger brother and the other Jaegers was long gone, but he only had a few minutes before the authorities arrived to investigate the building full of bullet holes. 

He bounded up the stairs and entered Yuliy’s bedroom. He kicked aside the instrument case and dropped beside the bed to dig out his brother’s luggage. He tore it apart, but found nothing useful inside. He hesitated, then picked up the scarf their mother made off the floor before leaving the room.

The next door he tried was locked, but it was easy for him to kick it in. The room appeared to be an office, poorly organized with papers strewn about. Picking one off of the desk, he recognized the ship that had been on the docks in Shanghai where he had reunited with Yuliy and quickly gathered the rest. Then he dug through the drawers for anything else that might be interesting and discovered an envelope of notes referring to the Ark of Sirius. He stuffed it into his coat, and then pulled out a tin container of lighter fluid.

He doused the desk and tossed a match down. As the fire took, he ran down the hall to splash the walls and floors, dropping more lit matches behind him. The aged wallpaper curled and the upper floor filled with smoke. As Mikhail hurried down the stairs to the entrance hall, he heard voices outside shouting and headed for the kitchen door. By the time the police had the building surrounded, he was already past the garden and racing through the trees to the far side of campus. He did not look back.

* * *

The next half hour was the second most harrowing of Ryoko’s life as Dorothea careened wildly toward Tokyo’s outskirts. She managed to shake the police in a traffic jam, and switched off the siren as they entered into a quiet residential neighborhood along the banks of the Doshi River. From the back of the ambulance, Ryoko guided her to a narrow street that disappeared under a thick canopy of trees, then changed into a dirt road as it pulled up to a gate set in a wall that surrounded a sprawling Japanese mansion. 

“What is this place?” Dorothea asked uneasily. Ryoko didn’t answer but threw open the ambulance doors and dashed up to the gate. She pounded the call button on a modern intercom set beside the entrance until she heard an answering buzz.

“Sensei! It’s Ryoko Naoe!” She shouted into the speaker. “Please open up!”

“Ryoko?” Came the gruff voice of her old teacher on the other end. “What’s going on?”

“Someone’s hurt,” Ryoko begged. “Please open the gate--I’ll explain everything!”

There was an ear-splitting beep and the mechanical locks on the gate released. Ryoko pushed it open wide as Dorothea and Jiro came up behind with Yuliy on a stretcher between them. They paused before entering the mansion’s twilit courtyard then carried Yuliy toward the two-story main house. Ryoko’s old sensei, an imposing man who dressed as if he was not expecting company, was stepping out onto the walkway to see what his student had brought him. He balked at the sight of the blood-covered young man but instead of turning them away, quickly ushered them to a spare bedroom on the ground floor. Once they transferred Yuliy from the stretcher to a cot, they ran out again to bring Philip inside. 

Ryoko resumed her task of holding gauze to Yuliy’s shoulder, but she sat on the floor beside him instead of on his chest. All of the jostling around had woken him up but he seemed weak and disoriented. He asked her, “Where...where are the others?”

“They’re safe,” Ryoko assured him quietly. She could hear Philip yelling as the others tried to settle him down in the room beside Yuliy’s. “They won’t find us here.” She hoped that they wouldn’t, anyway.

“Safe?” Yuliy repeated after her, his brows furrowed in confusion. 

“Yes,” Ryoko said. “Don’t you remember? You fought those...those monsters, and you protected all of us.”

“I...protected all of...” Yuliy trailed off, the lines on his face smoothing out as he relaxed. For a moment Ryoko thought he had lost consciousness again. Then his eyes fluttered open and this time they were sad when they focused on her face. “Ryoko,” he said unexpectedly. “You weren’t...supposed to know.”

Ryoko thought that it made more sense to her now, at least, why he had been so cold to her on their way back from the library. He was purposefully trying to keep her away, albeit in a clumsy, hurtful manner. She would have preferred that he told her the truth but the entire Department had been deceiving her since the very beginning. 

Behind her, Ryoko’s sensei cleared his throat. She turned and he said warily, “Ryoko, there’s another man here. He says he is a doctor.” 

He took a step back and allowed someone behind him to come forward. This had to be the same person that Dorothea had been calling to come and help treat Yuliy. He was a middle aged, clean-shaven and gaunt looking man. Ryoko stood up and her eyes went wide because she  _ knew _ him. Disbelieving, she said, “Doctor Hanada?”

What was he doing here? How did he know Dorothea? Ryoko would not get her answers for a long while yet; Hanada ignored her as he strode into the room authoritatively, leading Jiro who carried supplies scavenged from the ambulance. Hanada had a bag of his own tools that he snapped open as he studied his patient from above.

“I need towels and hot water,” he said coolly, looking over his shoulder at Ryoko’s teacher. 

Ryoko persisted. “Doctor Hanada! Are you involved in all of this? How do you know the Jaegers?”

“Get her out of here,” Hanada said sharply. He tied on a face mask and gloves, then knelt beside Yuliy. His eyes glittered and he muttered something that was muffled, but sounded to Ryoko like, “Hello again, Yuliy. Look how much you’ve grown.”

Jiro put a hand to Ryoko’s shoulder and she jumped. “Please, Miss Naoe,” he said and indicated the door. 

Ryoko didn’t budge. She wouldn't move until someone, anyone explained what was going on. “Doctor Hanada!”

Her sensei came into the room and took her by the elbow. “Let them take care of the boy,” he rumbled and pulled her out of the room, closing the door behind them.

“I can help,” Ryoko protested. She pulled at the door but they had locked it from the other side. Then she stopped, briefly transfixed by the sight of her hands covered in blood, until she heard Yuliy’s painful cries start anew. Unreasonable fear that Jiro and the doctor were killing him racked through Ryoko, and she rattled the door again. “Yuliy!” She sobbed, her voice nearly hysterical, and her teacher put his hands on her again.

“Ryoko, you must come away from there,” he said sternly. Ryoko recognized the tone as one he used to direct his younger students when they grew frustrated or tired during training, even though she hadn’t been reprimanded for throwing a temper-tantrum in his dojo for a long time. He was right, though; there was nothing she could do for Yuliy right now besides let Doctor Hanada do his work. 

“Yes, Sensei,” Ryoko said forlornly. She let go of the door and took a step away.

“Clean up now,” her teacher added. “Then come to the tearoom and tell me what kind of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”

* * *

When Ryoko saw herself in the mirror she nearly screamed. The front of her blouse and her face were covered with so much dried, dull-colored blood that she resembled a victim in a slasher film. The water ran red as she scrubbed her skin clean and wept quietly over the horrors of the day.

When she finally stepped out of the bathroom she could no longer hear Yuliy down the hall. Philip’s room was also quiet when she shuffled wearily past. Even though her head had been ringing with questions since they fled the Annex, Ryoko now felt exhausted and hollowed-out. All she wanted to do was lay down and close her eyes, but she owed her teacher an explanation.

Even though she had not been to her instructor’s house since she had started college, it was still a peaceful and familiar place. He was waiting for her in a room that overlooked the back garden through a sliding glass door. It was lightly furnished with two modern low-backed armchairs and a love seat stationed around a rectangular coffee table. They had been positioned so that visitors would face the garden, but the sun had long since set and the mansion seemed to stand alone in an island of yellow light on a sea of darkness. As she paused to look outside before sitting, a breeze passed over the shrubbery and Ryoko’s heart leapt in her throat. 

“Ryoko,” her instructor said to get her attention. He was sitting in one of the armchairs at the far end of the table, and she took the one at the opposite end. On the table between them was a beautiful bamboo tray, a ceramic teapot, and two matching cups. Her teacher silently poured the tea and then handed one over to Ryoko. The warmth of the cup in her hands grounded her back to the earth, and she inhaled the sweet smell of jasmine as the steam passed over her face. It was so pleasant that she nearly started up crying again.

“I can’t even believe what’s happening to me, Sensei,” Ryoko began. She stared down at the tiny reflection in her cup. “I don’t think you’ll believe me, either.”

“Try me,” her instructor coaxed her gently. 

“W-well,” Ryoko stammered. Was she really going to do this? She had admired and respected this man for years, but there was no way she could convince him that everything she had learned in the last few hours was real, short of introducing him to a bloodthirsty vampire herself. “Have you...have you ever heard of anyone called...a Jaeger?”

“Jaeger?” Her teacher repeated. “It sounds German.”

“It means _hunter_,” said Dorothea, who had appeared in the door behind Ryoko. Her expression was stoic and her tone cool when she addressed Ryoko’s teacher. “Thank you for taking us in, Mister..?”

Ryoko’s teacher also grew reserved as he replied, “My name is Okamoto.”

“Mister Okamoto,” Dorothea continued, smiling though it did not reach her cold green eyes. “I promise we won’t be here for very long.”

Okamoto frowned. “That boy was badly wounded. He’s not in any shape to be moved.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t underestimate our Yuliy,” Dorothea replied. “He’s bounced back from much worse.” She stepped into the room and laid her hand on the back of Ryoko’s chair. For some reason, Ryoko’s own hands were trembling. 

“Who are you?” Okamoto demanded. “What are you involved in?”

“It’s safer for you if you don’t know,” Dorothea answered. 

Ryoko stood abruptly, spinning to face the other woman and flinging her teacup away angrily. “That’s bullshit!” She exclaimed. “You guys didn’t tell me anything and today I was almost eaten!” Her whole body was shaking as Ryoko fought to keep her emotions in check but it all came out in a rush. “How can something that horrible be a secret to the whole entire world? We--we have a right to know the truth!” She pointed a finger menacingly at Dorothea, who raised both of her hands in surrender. “Starting right here, right now with me!”

The room was quiet, stunned by her outburst. Then Dorothea slowly lowered her hands and nodded. “You’ve got it, Ryoko. I’ll tell you the truth. But first, I’m going to need a drink.”

Okamoto grunted as he stood. “I’ll get more tea.”

“It’ll take something stronger than that,” Dorothea told him and moved to the love seat. She pushed the tray to one side and pulled a small zippered pouch from off of her belt, then her gun from its under-arm holster inside of her jacket. She began to disassemble the gun and clean its separate parts while Ryoko picked up her tea cup and cleaned up the mess she had made. 

A few minutes later, Okamoto returned with a bottle of amber-colored booze and three shot glasses. 

The whiskey burned Ryoko’s lips but she swallowed it down without gagging. Dorothea and Okamoto both had a second round before they set down their glasses and sighed.

“Okay, Miss Naoe,” Dorothea said. “Fire away.”

The whiskey left Ryoko’s tongue feeling thick and heavy in her mouth. “Where’s Mr Akimoto?” She asked, remembering suddenly that she had not seen him for some time.

“Ditching the ambulance,” Dorothea replied.

“Does he work for the Organization?” Ryoko did not recall reading his name in any of Fallon’s reports. “I thought that he worked for my father, as a driver.”

“He does  _ technically _ work for your dad,” Dorothea agreed. “He was recommended by the Professor for the position after we learned that you would be working with us. It was supposed to make it easier to keep you from seeing what you weren’t supposed to see.”

A chill ran up Ryoko’s spine despite the whiskey warming her belly. It seemed like there had been a lot of talk about her before she had even left Osaka. In her lap, both of her hands clenched tightly into fists. “Does my dad know about the Jaegers? One of those guys that attacked us today recognized me. And Agatha is…is…” Her heart began to pound. Agatha was close to the Baron every day. She went with him everywhere. Was she controlling him, like she had tried to control Ryoko? Would she going to hurt him, or worse..? “What do they want with my father!?”

“Hang on a second, who is Agatha?” Dorothea asked. 

“His assistant,” Ryoko explained. “She… She took my memory away after what happened at the cell shop in Akihabara.” Ryoko screwed her eyes shut to fend off the images of the murdered phone technicians and monstrous vampires that came unbidden to her mind as she spoke. “She’s one of them.”

“One of what?” Okamoto leaned forward. “Ryoko, is your father in danger?”

“Yes, he is,” Dorothea said. “We don’t know why, but the enemy has infiltrated the NTC up to its highest levels. Jared Kershner, the CEO of ALMA is well known to us, and we think he’s up to something.”

“The ‘enemy’?” Okamoto was growing impatient. “Who are you people?”

Dorothea poured three more generous measures into their empty shot glasses and then offered one to Ryoko’s instructor. She asked him, “Tell me Mr Okamoto, do you believe in monsters?”

* * *

For the next hour, Dorothea filled the others in on what she knew and speculated. Unbeknownst to the Organization, Vampires had been established in Tokyo for several years. They had intended to use Ryoko to spy on the Jaegers through her ALMA phone, which was why they had killed the technicians in Akihabara to prevent them from discovering the software. What else they were doing with the vast telecommunications infrastructure available to them at NTC was still a mystery. Then a powerful vampire Royal had wiped Ryoko’s memory and sent her back to the Annex, confident that their operation hadn’t yet been exposed. They had not counted on Yuliy destroying their thralls and revealing their secret to the rest of the Jaegers.

Ryoko wanted to know why the vampires had turned up at the Annex determined to kill them all if they believed that their presence had previously been undetected. Dorothea suggested that something had changed--whatever reason the enemy had for keeping the Jaegers alive no longer existed. “Big mistake on their part,” she told them with a grin. “Now that the cat is out of the bag, we’ll be able to round up some reinforcements and take them head on.” Dorothea emphasized her point by punching her open palm with her fist like a schoolyard bully threatening to steal someone’s lunch money. 

“What about the Professor?” Ryoko asked. “They could be after him right now, too.”

A cloud passed over Dorothea’s face. “Somehow I doubt it,” she said grimly. “I think the Professor has been feeding them information on our movements this entire time.”

Ryoko gasped. “Why would he do that?”

“Beats me. He’s served the Organization for a long time, but he’s served himself for even longer.” Dorothea considered her next words carefully. “I recently uncovered some unusual skeletons in the Professor’s closet, but my evidence is all back at the Annex.” She shrugged and looked over Ryoko’s head. In the doorway behind her was Dr Hanada. Blood had dried down the front of his clothes but his hands and face were pink from a fresh scrubbing.

“Hello, Miss Naoe,” he said casually, as if he were greeting her in the waiting room of his office. “You’re looking well. How is your head?”

Ryoko frowned. Her head? She didn’t understand what he was talking about--then she remembered that he had treated her on Saturday morning, after she had taken ill. Now Dr Hanada was here, and somehow involved with the Organization. Though her thoughts were slowed by alcohol and exhaustion Ryoko pressed on, trying to make sense of it all. “Doctor Hanada,” she asked quietly, “How do you know Dorothea?”

“We have a mutual friend, Professor Willard,” Hanada replied. “He and I have been acquainted for many years.”

“And how long…” Ryoko’s voice cracked but her eyes were defiant. “How long have you been working for the vampires?” She felt crazy even saying it, but she had to know.

Hanada did not answer her. He sighed, and then addressed the others in the room, “Both of the patients are asleep now. I’ve given them powerful painkillers that should get them through the night. I have to leave now, but I’ll be back tomorrow.” 

“You can’t!” Ryoko started to follow the Doctor as he made to leave the room. Leaning on her chair for support she looked back at Dorothea and said, “We can’t let him go! What if he tells them where we are?”

“He won’t do that,” Dorothea answered evasively. She put her gun back into its holster. “But I’ll take first watch. You should get some sleep, Ryoko.”

Ryoko swayed where she stood. “But we’re not done talking about this…”

“I’ve had quite enough,” Okamoto said. He hadn’t spoken a word for an hour but listened to Dorothea with a troubled look on his face. He got up from his chair and went to help Ryoko into the hallway. When they were out of earshot, he lowered his voice and told her, “I’m going to call the police, Ryoko. These people are dangerous.”

“No!” Ryoko exclaimed, seizing his sleeve. “You can’t call the police. They’re watching!” 

“Who is watching? These...these vampires!?” Her sensei looked astonished. “Ryoko please don’t tell me you believe this insanity!”

“It’s not…” Ryoko faltered and hung her head. It was absolutely insane. “Please, teacher, I know it looks bad. But trust me. Calling the police would just put more people in danger.”

Okamoto stared at her for several heavy seconds. Finally he said, “You need to rest, Ryoko. Go to the eastern guest room. I will bring you something to wear.”

Ryoko let go of her teacher’s arm and nodded. She shuffled across the house to a bedroom with a window that had a beautiful view of a bend in the river in the daylight hours. Ryoko lowered the shutters against the dark night before pulling a quilt out of the closet and laying it on the floor. Unconsciously she put her hand to her pocket to check the time, but her phone was long gone. 

Her instructor reappeared with yukata that his students wore outside of the dojo; Ryoko ran her hands gently over the familiar material and fought back the urge to cry once more. 

As she lay down, Ryoko thought that she would have a hard time relaxing with the chaos and fear running amok in her mind. However, as soon as she closed her eyes her body surrendered, and she was soon fast asleep.

* * *

Wednesday 16 August 6:08am, Taijini University

A large, red-haired Westerner strode across the school’s silent grounds with his nose high in the air. He carried a leather briefcase and an oversized duffel bag. There was a haze in the atmosphere over the University that seemed to muffle every sound and block out every light. As he approached the Annex it became clear that it was the source of the sweet burning smell, and his steps became more urgent.

Yellow police tape had been strung up between wooden stakes surrounding the scorched remains of the building but it did nothing to dissuade the man who ducked comically low to pass underneath it. He did stop when two bleary-eyed police officers pointed lit flashlights in his face from their post just beyond the Annex’s front door and shouted at him to identify himself.

“Don’t worry, I work here!” The man bellowed cheerfully. “The name’s Fallon. I’m a professor.” He flashed a school ID for just a few seconds, then climbed up the front steps despite their avid protests. He looked up to see thick black soot coating the walls where smoke had escaped from the shattered windows of the upper floor and whistled. “Wow! What happened here?”

“Gas leak,” answered one of the cops. “The whole school has been evacuated. You need to get out of here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Fallon replied, not listening. “I just have to get a few things, then I’ll be on my way.” He gave the door an experimental push, and it fell in. A cloud of ash rose up and started both of the officers coughing. They wheezed at Fallon to get out, but he ignored them as he climbed gingerly over the door and stepped inside.

The inside of the Annex was a reeking twilight ruin. Parts of the ceiling had collapsed and walls had caved in. He stepped up to take a closer look and fingered the unmistakable bullet holes that had been left behind by what must have been a hell of a firefight. Gas leak, indeed.

He turned toward the wooden staircase and saw how badly it had been warped by the heat. Cautiously he put his foot onto one step, but it shattered into splinters when he tried to put his weight on it. 

“Oi,” he muttered to himself. “Guess I won’t be going that way.” He faced the police again, who were following him with their flashlights but did not dare to follow him inside. “What happened to the people who were living here?”

“This building was empty when it went up,” one replied. “Did you say you were a professor? Do you know anything about who was staying here?”

“Nope, not a thing,” Fallon lied happily. “I’ve been away on sabbatical.” Then he crossed the entrance hall and went into his office. It seemed largely untouched by the fire, though something had happened that had disappeared all of the dust and junk he had been carelessly cultivating before he had left. There were also large gashes in the rug and his desk had been destroyed by some kind of violent force--damage that a normal investigator may have dismissed as consequences of the fire, but Fallon immediately knew better. He moved from the office to the passage to the kitchen and tried the door leading into the basement. To his immense relief, it held fast.

One of the officers had gotten brave enough to follow him and saw him unlock the door and descend into the basement. “H-Hey!” They cried out, pointing their flashlight down into the dark abyss. “You can’t go down there! It’s not safe!”

“I’ll just be a minute!” Fallon called back. His voice echoed in the pitch-black basement as he felt along the wall for a switch. When he flicked it, nothing happened. Of course they would have shut down power to the building. However, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see small blinking lights and hear the soft hum of fans that were plugged into a back-up generator that the Jaegers kept hidden underground. Then he pulled out his phone and switched on the flashlight to illuminate the cluster of servers along one wall. 

Wherever his teammates had disappeared to, Fallon assumed they had gone in a hurry since they had left some pretty important stuff behind. There wasn’t a way he could carry it out himself either, at least not discreetly, and he would not be surprised if their enemies were still observing the building somehow and watching his every move. 

Fallon crouched in front of the servers and frowned. Technology was not his strong suit. Then he raised his phone over his head and caught sight of a folded white paper taped to the wall with childish scrawl across the top. It read: EMERGENCY BACK UP INSTRUCTIONS. 

Perfect.

The instructions were thankfully typed and easy to follow. There was a keyboard and screen plugged into one of the servers, and all Fallon had to do was initiate a program that would upload the Jaegers’ encrypted data to some remote storage and then wipe it all from the local machinery as if it had never existed. Philip had explained the whole process to the entire team once, but Fallon was still unclear on how it worked. He just knew that it was important. When the server beeped affirmatively and the fans picked up speed, he folded the instructions and slid them into his pocket.

“You have to leave!” Repeated the officer upstairs. “If you refuse to vacate the premises, I will be forced to arrest you!” From his tone, Fallon guessed that the officer really, really did not want to have to do that.

“Hold your horses, I’m almost done,” Fallon shouted back. With a grunt of effort, he stood up and passed his phone light over the wall beneath the stairs. There was another locked door, and beside it was what appeared to be an electronic alarm control. He walked over and entered a code that unlocked the door with a pneumatic hiss.

Grinning gleefully, Fallon crammed his huge body into the tiny space beneath the stairs. Inside was a horde of weapons that would have had them all locked up in Japanese federal prison for several lifetimes. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to take them all with him--just the ones he could carry.

“Hello?” The officer at the top of the stairs called warily after he heard nothing from the basement for several long minutes. “Are you still--”

The foreigner reappeared with a large rectangular instrument case that the officer was not sure he had been carrying before. “Hey, sorry for the hold up,” the giant man said, smiling broadly. “Can I get you guys some coffee?”

* * *

8:30am, Sagamihara

Philip was awoken by the bright sunlight streaming into his room, and the cheerful calls of birds somewhere outside. For a moment he forgot where he was and tried to roll over to check the time on his alarm clock, but incredible pain coursed through his body like an electric shock. He cried out and opened his eyes, but did not recognize his surroundings. Then the terrible fight from the day before came back to him, and he felt lucky to be alive. Of course if he were dead he probably wouldn’t hurt so much, but he wasn’t the type to give up so easily. 

Where were his teammates? What was this place? And what had happened to his clothes? He was about to call out when he heard footsteps approaching and turned his head to face the door. To his surprise, it was Ryoko who entered carrying a tray. She was wearing a floral-print yukata and had her hair tied up out of her face.

“Are you okay, Philip?” She asked gently. “I thought I heard you shouting.”

“I’m fine!” Philip barked, fighting to keep the panic from rising. Ryoko had been there in the Annex at some point during the attack. What had she seen? What did she know? And was she really ignorant of her connection to Kershner and the vampires at ALMA--or had she led the enemy right to them?

Ryoko did not seem troubled by Philip’s outburst. She crouched beside him on the floor and set the tray down. On it was a bowl of porridge, a pot of tea, and a glass of water, along with a narrow vase with a single yellow flower on a fragile green stem. “I brought some breakfast,” she said. “I thought maybe you would be hungry.”

Philip tried to sit up, but searing pain in his side made him suck in his breath and groan. Ryoko put her hand out and said quickly, “Be careful! Mr Akimoto said you probably have a couple of broken ribs…”

“I don’t need your help,” Philip protested. He tried to push her hand away, but found that his arm was tightly bound with bandages and braced with a thin wooden dowel. The motion sent agony down his fingers and he yelped, which hurt his ribs and started him coughing.

“...And a broken wrist,” Ryoko added wryly. She stood and went over to the closet in the wall opposite the window to pull out several more pillows and a quilt. Then she set it all in a pile on the floor behind Philip for him to begrudgingly lean back on. Still determined to act as if he hadn’t been kicked around like a blood-covered bean bag, Philip carefully balanced the porridge on his lap and used his good hand to spoon hot mush into his mouth. Almost immediately, he gagged.

“Gah!” He exclaimed. “This tastes awful. Are you trying to poison me!?”

“I didn’t know if you wanted honey or sugar!” Ryoko replied angrily. “I brought both! Help yourself!” She indicated a two small ceramic containers on the tray. “Seriously? What’s your problem?”

“What’s my PROBLEM!?” Philip’s voice cracked. “I only almost DIED, thank you very much!”

The exertion of raising his voice was too much for him. Pain wracked his chest and Philip hugged his sides trying to suppress more rib-cracking coughs. When the fit passed, he opened his eyes to find Ryoko watching him with a pitying expression, which only made him angrier. He opened his mouth to yell at her to leave him alone, but she spoke first. 

“You’re right, I’m sorry Philip,” she said softly. “You should… You should try to take it easy. The doctor will be back later today. He can help you with the pain.”

Philip averted his eyes. He reached clumsily for the sugar and dumped the entire dish into his porridge. After a moment of stirring silently, he asked, “So, uh, where are we?”

“This is my teacher’s house, in Sagamihara,” Ryoko answered. “We’ll be safe here.”

“I hope that you’re right,” Philip said. “We’re not ready for another battle.”

Ryoko shuddered and reached up to pull her yukata tight around her throat. Philip narrowed his eyes at her and asked, “Maybe I was delusional from all of the blood loss but did you… did you try to stab a vampire last night? With a tiny knife?”

Red-faced, Ryoko replied, “It wasn’t that tiny!” It hadn’t been all that effective, either. She probably would have gotten them both killed if Yuliy and Dorothea hadn’t intervened. “But… yeah, I did. Though now that I think about it I guess I should have used a wooden stake, huh?”

She smiled timidly, trying to indicate that she was mostly joking. Philip guffawed and shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

“ _ I’m _ crazy?” Ryoko asked, dumbfounded. “You’re one to talk. Your whole  _ job  _ is fighting vampires!”

“Yeah, well, somebody’s got to do it,” Philip said haughtily before tucking into the now too-sweet porridge. Ryoko watched him eat for a minute before she suddenly burst into tears.

“Oh my God, what now!?” Philip demanded. Though his tone was exasperated, his forehead was creased with worry. 

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Ryoko said, picking a napkin off of the tray and wiping her face. “I was just… I was just thinking that this wouldn’t have happened if I’d never shown up at the Department in the first place…”

Philip blinked, puzzled, then reached out to pat her shoulder awkwardly with his linen-wrapped hand. “Hey, you can’t blame yourself for something like this,” he told her. “We all knew the risks when we signed up with the Organization. This war’s been going on since before we were even born.” 

“But Dorothea told me everything last night,” Ryoko objected. “About ALMA, and how the vampires in my dad’s company sent me to  _ spy  _ on you.” 

“And if it wasn’t you, it would have been somebody else,” Philip said dismissively. “They knew we were there already and it was only a matter of time before they came knocking on our door.” He cleared his throat. “I admit, when you first showed up I thought you would be nothing but trouble…” The color rose in his cheeks and he would not look at Ryoko as he mumbled, “But I guess you’re really not that bad, Naoe.”

Ryoko hadn’t come to Philip’s room looking for that kind of reassurance, but it did make her feel better to hear it anyway. Still sniffling, she stood up and said, “Thanks, Philip. You’re not too bad yourself. I’ll be back later for the tray.”

“Finally, some peace and quiet,” Philip said as Ryoko left. She decided that it was a good sign that despite the savage beating he had taken, he was already back to his old abrasive self. 

Ryoko returned to the kitchen to prepare a second bowl of porridge. It was a huge, modern room outfitted with two ovens and a six-burner range designed to feed an army of hungry kendo students, but today it was empty and silent. She wondered if her sensei had canceled his classes after she had brought a handful of wounded fugitives into his home, and hoped that he had refrained from calling the police like she had asked. 

After she had assembled a second tray, Ryoko left the kitchen to check in on Yuliy. She hesitated in front of the door to his room, unsure about what she would find inside. He had been hurt pretty badly--was he well enough to eat? And while Philip had seemed pretty forgiving of her unwitting involvement with their enemies in his own way, would Yuliy be willing to overlook it after having to risk his life to save hers,  _ twice _ ?

Ryoko straightened her back, inhaled, and knocked twice before she opened the door. The room was dark and the air was heavy. Like Philip, Yuliy had been laid out on the floor, but he was covered by a comforter and she couldn’t even hear him breathing. Blood-soaked gauze filled the wastebasket by the door, more than she thought any human could lose and survive. 

Cautiously, she said his name. “Yuliy?”

After a moment, the lump on the floor stirred. The top of Yuliy’s head emerged first, then his eyes ringed by dark circles. He certainly looked like someone who had been shot. Heartened by even this muted response, Ryoko closed the door and came closer. 

“I’ve brought you something to eat,” she said, keeping her voice down as she knelt beside him. “And some water to drink. Can you sit up?”

Yuliy remained silent but slowly rose up from his lying position on the floor. Like Philip, he had been stripped of his clothes so that Dr Hanada could treat his injuries and Ryoko could see thick layers of bandages were wrapped tightly around his chest and left shoulder. She offered him the glass and he took it from her, careful not to touch her hands, and gulped it down. Then she picked up the bowl of porridge.

“Great,” she said encouragingly. “Do you think you could eat something?”

“I’m not hungry,” Yuliy replied tersely and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

Ryoko frowned, but insisted. “You have to keep your strength up so that you can heal. Just try.”

“I don’t need it,” Yuliy said. He was squinting around the room and not looking at Ryoko. It was like they were back on the train and he was trying to ice her out instead of being honest. 

“Just cut the tough guy act already!” Ryoko exclaimed, hitting the floor with her fist hard enough to make the dishes on the tray rattle. “I kept you from bleeding out in the back of an ambulance yesterday, so the least you can do is  _ listen  _ to me!”

Yuliy’s eyes widened and he gulped. “Fine,” he finally grunted. Ryoko poured some honey onto the porridge--muttering something about ‘sweetening his attitude’--before handing it over and watching him arduously eat it. 

Once he finished, she placed the bowl back on the tray and remarked, “There, that wasn’t so hard.”

He responded with a scowl. “What is this place?” He asked.

“This is my teacher’s house, and my old dojo,” Ryoko answered. 

“Where are the Jaegers?”

Ryoko pointed to the wall Yuliy shared with Philip’s room. “Philip is in there, resting. He’s been hurt pretty bad, but Dr Hanada is coming back later today to keep looking after the both of you. I’m not sure where Dorothea or Mr Akimoto are. I haven’t seen them at all today.”

Yuliy’s eyes narrowed. “Who is Dr Hanada?”

“Someone we can trust,” Ryoko explained. “I think. He was my doctor when I was a little girl, and…” She hesitated, then continued, “He says he knows the Professor. And I think he knows you, too.”

Yuliy shook his head. “I don’t know anyone called Dr Hanada.”

Ryoko shrugged. “He said something yesterday that just made me think…” She trailed off, and cast her eyes to the ground. She knew that now that she had this opportunity, she had to ask him some very difficult questions--even if she was frightened of the answers.

“Listen, Yuliy…” She began, glancing back up at his face. His eyes met hers with the same inscrutable intensity as always. “Dorothea told me--told me everything last night. About you--I mean the Jaegers, and the vampires, and what happened in Akihabara. I remember it all.” Her throat tightened in grief at the death of the innocent technicians but she pushed the emotions back, determined to power through. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Yuliy stared hard at the comforter covering his legs and wished that he could disappear. There was hurt in Ryoko’s voice that he knew he was responsible for and he hated how guilty it made him feel. “Dorothea ordered us to keep it a secret,” he finally said. 

“Is that all you’re good at? Following orders?” Ryoko asked sharply. It just sounded like more excuses to her. All of the fun she had making lunch with the Department, their trip to the Library, and even the memory of Yuliy smoothing calendula balm into her sore hands were all tainted by the knowledge they had been keeping a terrible secret from her all this time. “Why don’t you think for yourself for once and tell me the damn truth!”

“I didn’t want you to get hurt!” Yuliy snapped. Ryoko’s eyes grew wide and a flush crept over both of their cheeks. Yuliy felt suddenly exposed, though he didn’t understand what exactly he had revealed to her. “I… I didn’t want you to get involved. It’s not your fight.”

That was not the right answer. Ryoko’s voice rose. “ _ Not my fight? _ ” She repeated. “They used me! Brainwashed me! They’re practically holding my dad  _ hostage  _ and you’re telling me it’s not my fight!?” 

Ryoko stood abruptly, the picture of righteous female fury. “You’re so full of it, Yuliy Jirov!” She shouted and stomped out of the room without caring about who might have heard her lose her temper. She forgot about the tray of dishes and marched across the mansion to the dojo. It had been a while since she had taken her frustrations out on one of the foam-covered practice dummies lined up against the far wall, but one unlucky mannequin was about to receive the beating of a lifetime.

* * *

10:00am, Shiodome City Center

“Rest assured, Mr Naoe, I have my best people scouring the city for your daughter,” Agatha said sweetly into her cellphone as she entered a glass-walled conference room in the NTC’s Shiodome office. “Every hospital, police station, and morgue.” 

She rolled her eyes pointedly and made a face toward the two men already seated at the long black table. At the head was a broad, pale, bleach-blonde Westerner watching her over his entwined fingers. Several seats away from him with his boots on the arm of another chair was an equally pale young man named Mikhail with distastefully torn clothes and a bored look on his face. Like her, both of them were vampires.

“Now sir, don’t get so upset,” Agatha tittered into the phone. “Remember your condition. I have to go into a meeting but I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”

Without waiting for a reply, she hung up and spoke to the Vampire Royal at the head of the table. “I cannot stand that man. Kershner, how much longer must we keep up with this farce?”

“I am counting down the hours, Aggie,” Kershner replied. “Do you have those names?”

“Yes,” Agatha said as she sat to Kershner’s left. She set down the black binder she was carrying and flipped it open to pull a piece of notebook paper out of the inner pocket. “Kuratake, Hamada, Eto, Tachibana, Mori, Kuse, and Tanaka were the ones who performed the unauthorized assault on the Jaegers posted at Taijini University.” She scowled. “As you already know, none of them survived.”

“Fools,” Kershner grumbled. “What about their access cards? Was anything left behind that could be traced back to us?”

“All but one of their IDs were recovered from the scene by our friends at the police department,” Agatha answered. “The last one is assumed to be destroyed in the fire.”

The third vampire scoffed, “What, not even a moment of silence for our fallen brothers?” He took his boots off of the other chair and sat up. “I hope that somebody is a bit more sympathetic when it’s my time to shed this immortal coil.” He grinned sardonically. “That was… seven dead, right Aggie? Brings your total losses up to ten in two weeks.” 

Kershner narrowed his eyes. “Wasn’t Tanaka the one who picked you up at the airport, Jirov?”

Mikhail shrugged. “Sounds about right. Not a very chatty fellow.”

“He didn’t mention anything about losing his mind and attacking our enemies in broad daylight?” Agatha asked sarcastically. 

“Not that I recall,” Mikhail replied. “I played cards with him and a couple other guys. Could have been the ones you mentioned. They didn’t sound very happy with management but who here actually  _ likes  _ their boss?” 

A muscle in Agatha’s cheek twitched. Kershner asked her, “Any news of the Naoe girl or any of those Jaegers?”

“There was a report of someone skulking around their headquarters early this morning, but nothing conclusive,” Agatha said. “And we found the Naoe girl’s phone in a pawn shop. Evidently someone found it in the street last night not far from the University. The bastards have gone to ground and we don’t have a way to track them.”

Kershner was quiet for several moments, thinking. “It’s certainly an inconvenience not knowing where they are, but perhaps those bumbling morons did us a favor.”

Agatha raised an eyebrow.

“We can assume that the Jaegers were probably wounded during the fight and the fire,” Kershner explained. “And with their headquarters and equipment destroyed, they’ve also been temporarily cut off from the rest of their wretched Organization. We would have had to clear them out eventually but the traitors have done it for us, and taken themselves out of the equation. Two birds, one stone, as the saying goes.”

Agatha’s dark red lips twisted thoughtfully. “I suppose I hadn’t thought of that, but how can we be sure they won’t recover when it is time to enact our plan?”

“I have one last ace up my sleeve,” Kershner answered enigmatically. “A direct line into the heart of the nest. One strategic tug…” He mimed pulling a string. “And the whole artifice will come crumbling down.”

* * *

1:20pm, Sagamihara

By the time Ryoko had spent all of her anger on the well-dented dummy, her arms were screaming and her palms were bleeding with the effort of swinging the bamboo shinai around. Her sensei had made a brief appearance to comment on her form before going outside to tend his garden, but otherwise Ryoko was alone with her thoughts. 

The practice sword fell from her hands when she lost all the strength to hold it up. Then she heard footsteps in the doorway and turned to see Dorothea leaning to one side and smiling.

“Boy troubles?” The older woman said wryly.

“What are you talking about?” Ryoko retorted.

“C’mon, Miss Naoe, I think the entire neighborhood heard you this morning.” Dorothea walked across the room to pick the shinai up. She seemed surprised by how heavy it was. “Just for the record, I think you’re right. Yuliy is pretty full of it.”

Ryoko was grateful that the exercise had already brought color to her cheeks so that Dorothea could not see her blushing. “I think we’ve got bigger things to worry about than petty personal conflicts,” she muttered, accepting the bamboo sword from Dorothea and going to put it away in a closet. 

“I would disagree,” Dorothea said. “We’re all human, aren’t we? Or trying to be, anyway.”

Ryoko turned around with her hand on the closet’s sliding door, her brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

Dorothea chuckled. “I mean… Yuliy’s been fighting this war his entire life. He never had a chance to make real friends, have real fun, or fall in love…” Her expression became coy. “Honestly, when I heard you were coming around to the Department I hoped that you could show him a thing or two about life outside of the Organization. Maybe convince him to settle down, have some fun...”

Ryoko supposed that Dorothea thought she would be flattered, but instead she recoiled in disgust. “So you wanted to use me?” She asked accusingly. “Just like everybody else?”

“Well, I didn’t think Philip was up for the task,” Dorothea replied, unfazed by her tone. 

“I’m sure he’ll be relieved to hear that the pressure is off,” Ryoko said angrily, slamming the closet door shut. She strode past Dorothea and added, “Get the lights on your way out.”

* * *

Yuliy didn’t know what time it was when someone knocked on the door to his room and let themselves in. He half expected it to be Ryoko again and braced himself for another scolding, but it was actually Jiro and another man he did not recognize. 

It must have showed on his face since the man paused to introduce himself. “Hello, Mr Jirov,” he said. “My name is Hanada. I’m a doctor. I was here yesterday.”

Yuliy did not like feeling so small from his position on the floor and attempted to stand. 

“Don’t get up,” the doctor ordered, stepping to his side. “I can see that you’re well enough to eat but you still lost a lot of blood.”

The doctor set down his bag and sat where Ryoko had been hours before. “I’m going to change your bandages. Tell me, how is the pain?”

“Pretty awful,” Yuliy answered truthfully. 

“As it should be. You were shot. The bullet almost struck your heart, you know.” As he spoke, the doctor pulled out a case of tools from his bag and selected a delicate pair of scissors. “An ordinary man would not be up and talking after a wound like that, but you are not an ordinary man, are you, Yuliy?” 

Yuliy gave Hanada a sharp look. He recalled what Ryoko had told him earlier about this doctor and asked, “Have we met?”

Hanada smirked. “Once. A very long time ago. You were just a pup then.”

He moved to start cutting the bandages off, but Yuliy leaned away from him warily. Hanada only sighed. 

“You can trust me to do this much,” said the doctor. “The bandages must come off or the wound will become septic. Not even a Sirius is immune to poison of the blood.”

Yuliy said nothing but did not move when the doctor began snipping. As the linen fell away, he watched the other man’s eyes rove over him curiously. 

“Incredible,” Hanada breathed. “Your healing factor has allowed you to recover a significant amount of damaged tissue in just a few hours. I wonder what your condition would be if you were not handicapped by your human heritage.”

The doctor’s naked fascination unsettled Yuliy. “How do you know so much about me? About being a Sirius?” 

Hanada put the used bandages aside and brought out a bottle of antiseptic, along with sealed packets of gauze. The material was cold as he pressed it against Yuliy’s still-tender bullet wound. “I learned a great deal from our mutual friend many years ago, when you were still recovering from your first encounter with the Vampires.”

“You mean the Professor?” Yuliy asked.

“Yes,” Hanada nodded. “He had been collecting knowledge on your tribe for several years before he found you bleeding to death in the snow. Quite a feat even for a man like him, as your people were famously elusive. I know of only one other outsider who ever managed to get close enough to study the Sirius in any great detail.”

“I had no idea that the Professor was researching the Sirius,” Yuliy said softly. He hesitated, then asked, “Did he ever say anything to you about something called the Ark?”

Hanada had turned to pull fresh bandages out of his bag, but paused to frown quizzically at his patient. “Did he never tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Yuliy asked urgently. He felt as if he was on the verge of a breakthrough, like when Ryoko had uncovered Akasaka’s book at the Tokyo Library. Hopefully this time it would not result in a dead end.

“Perhaps I should not have mentioned it,” the doctor said, his cool demeanor now suddenly evasive. “You should hear it from Willard.”

Yuliy reached out and seized Hanada’s forearm. He felt a surge of anger at the possibility of a lead slipping through his fingers again and snarled, “Tell me!”

Searing pain in his chest and down his arm forced him to release the doctor, who tugged on his cuff to smooth the wrinkles in his sleeve. “Very well,” he said. “The Ark was the focus of Willard’s search for the Sirius. A very powerful artifact, one that could grant the wishes of its master if he were strong enough to tame it. Willard disagreed with others’ conclusions that it was just a myth. And he was not the only one to believe that the legends of the Ark were true.”

Yuliy swallowed. “Who else is looking for it?”

“The Vampires,” Hanada said. “I am sure I do not need to tell you how poorly it bodes for the world if they were ever to find it.”

Yuliy stared into his lap, watching his hands curl into fists and ignoring the ache in his shoulder as the doctor redressed his wound. So it had been the Ark that had brought the Vampires to his village and signed the death warrant against his people. He recalled Akasaka’s book, and the delinquent anthropologist’s connection to the Vampires in Japan. Immediately, he was sure that Akasaka had something to do with the tragedy that had befallen the Sirius...and that somehow he was going to make that man  _ pay _ .

Yuliy had one more question, though he doubted Hanada had an answer. If the Professor had known for all of these years about the Ark and the Vampires that were searching for it...why hadn’t he told Yuliy the truth? 

The doctor finished applying the bandages and stood. “I am pleased with your progress, Mr Jirov. I estimate it will take only a few more days for you to heal completely.” He waved a hand in the direction of Philip’s room. “I wish I could say the same for your young friend, he still has several hard weeks ahead of him.”

Yuliy only nodded, too preoccupied to pay Philip’s condition much mind. He barely registered Hanada picking up his bag and leaving the room, until the doctor paused in the doorway.

“Miss Naoe,” He said, sounding surprised. “What has happened to your hands?”

“N-nothing!” Ryoko squeaked, standing somewhere just out of Yuliy’s sight. “I was just practicing some sword fighting…”

“Ah,” the doctor replied thoughtfully. “Come with me, I have an antibiotic cream you can apply to those blisters.” 

Hanada started walking and Ryoko passed by the door. Just for a moment, her inquisitive brown eyes met Yuliy’s hard blue ones--then she quickly looked away. As she padded down the hall after the doctor, Yuliy wondered how much of their conversation she had heard. Did hearing about his extraordinary abilities frighten her? And even if he did--why should he care?


	6. Chapter Six

Thursday 17 August, 8:20am

The next morning, Ryoko met her teacher on her way from her room to the kitchen. He was dressed like he was going out and carried a bag under his arm.

“Ryoko,” he told her gravely. “I have given this situation much consideration and I have decided I can no longer be involved. So I am going away for the weekend. I expect your strange friends to be gone by the time I return on Monday morning.”

“Yes, sensei,” Ryoko said softly, staring at the ground as he walked past her and out the front door. The disappointment in his voice hurt as badly as if she were still his obedient student, but she had no tears left to shed for their ruined relationship. She had thought long and hard the night before, and faced the day with new resolve.

When she entered the kitchen she found Jiro and Dorothea drinking coffee. It was obvious to her that they had been having a conversation but stopped to listen to her talk to her teacher in the hall. They both smiled as if they had heard nothing, and she responded with a hard stare.

“I have good news, Miss Naoe,” Dorothea said cheerfully as Ryoko walked around her to pour herself a coffee. “Fallon is back in Tokyo. We’ll be meeting with him and heading out of town to join the Professor soon.”

Ryoko’s cup clattered on the counter as she lost her grip. “You’re leaving?” She said, turning to face both of them. “You can’t!”

“Oh?” Dorothea said with mock surprise. “I thought you’d be relieved to have us out of your hair.”

“But I need your help!” Ryoko protested. She hated how she sounded as if she were pleading with them to stay. She could not forget how they had betrayed her trust. “The Vampires are still here, they still have my dad! He has no idea how much danger he’s in!”

“He’ll be safe as long as he doesn’t get in their way,” Dorothea shrugged. “This is too big for our little crew to handle alone. We’ll be back once we’ve come up with a strategy and gathered enough reinforcements.”

Ryoko looked at Jiro, who sipped his coffee and said nothing. His silence was even worse than Dorothea’s casual dismissal of Ryoko’s dire situation. What was _ wrong _ with these people?

“You can’t leave!” Ryoko repeated. “I’ll give you whatever you want—name your price!”

Dorothea raised her eyebrows. “We’re not mercenaries,” she said flatly. “You’re a smart kid, Ryoko, and you know that you don’t stand a chance. Besides being dangerous, these Vampires are powerful public figures. You’re not going to get them to disappear. Why don’t you just call some of your girlfriends and find a place to lie low for a while?” 

Ryoko refused to let Dorothea see that her remark struck a nerve. She had run away before when things had gotten hard; she had told herself that going to school in Osaka had been the best decision for her professional development, but in reality she had been trying to escape the painful memories left behind by her mother’s death. Now that everything else she cared about was in danger from _ actual _man eating monsters she could not afford to flee. 

“Fine,” Ryoko finally spat. “I’ll find someone else who can help me.” Fully aware of Jiro and Dorothea’s judgemental stares at her back, she grabbed an apple from the crisper in the fridge and made her way back to the dojo to eat breakfast far from the traitorous Jaegers discussing their plans to abandon her to her doom. 

Just what had she been thinking? Ryoko chided herself as she walked and ate. That the Jaegers were going to storm Shiodome City Center, guns blazing, to rescue her father from the evil undead? The Baron didn’t even know where she was, and was probably worried sick about her. She wondered if he’d gone to her apartment in Machida and discovered the pile of Organization reports she had accidentally taken home. Would he be angry, like her teacher, and think she’d lost her mind getting involved with a bunch of dangerous lunatics? 

Well, he’d be half right about that at least. Ryoko swallowed her last mouthful of apple and dropped the core by the door to the dojo to throw out later. If the Vampires didn’t decide to lock her up or break her neck to keep her quiet, her dad would probably put her under permanent house arrest, and she could kiss her dream of an ordinary adult life good-bye. It had been a little over a week since she’d returned to Tokyo hoping to make a difference for the Anthropology Department at some no-name University using her mother’s legacy, and now she was caught up in some fantastic conspiracy that was probably going to get her killed…

Ryoko paused with her hand on the door to the storage closet where the shinai were stored. No, she thought. She wasn’t going to run and hide, and she wasn’t going to fail. Somehow she was going to get her father away from that mind-melting Agatha and make him see the truth. But how was she going to get close to him without getting caught? If Dorothea was right about how they had been using her phone to spy on her, there was no doubt in Ryoko’s mind that the Vampires had eyes and ears in other places, too…

She heard the creak of the wood floor behind her and turned to see Yuliy entering the room. There were a few streaks of dried blood on his pants, and he had replaced his ruined shirt with a grey cotton happi that he wore open over his still-bandaged torso. Ryoko briefly thought that he looked pretty badass--but then remembered that she was still angry with him. When he blinked at her without saying anything, she demanded, “What do you want?” 

His face was impossible to read when he stepped closer and replied, “I wanted to practice. Dorothea told me that there was space and equipment in here.”

Ryoko narrowed her eyes. Her suspicion was not directed toward Yuliy, but Dorothea. Somehow Ryoko did not believe that Yuliy’s early retirement from Vampire hunting was Dorothea’s only motive for trying to pair them up, but she surely wasn’t still playing matchmaker after everything that had happened, right? She eyed the bandages beneath his happi and asked, “Are you sure you should be exercising now? You’re still healing.”

“I’ll be fine,” Yuliy said.

Ryoko hesitated. She had overheard the doctor say some incredible things about Yuliy; things that along with what she had seen him do at the Annex, made her question if he was really human. Finally, she conceded by turning and pulling another shinai out of the closet and tossing it to him. “Okay,” she said. “But I won’t go easy on you.”

Yuliy leaned forward to catch the bamboo sword just before it hit the ground, then straightened up. He sounded surprised when he asked her, “_ You’re _ going to fight me?”

“Of course,” Ryoko replied with forced bravado. She walked toward the center of the room. “I came here to practice too, you know. And I thought that maybe if I kicked your butt, you wouldn’t try to tell it’s not my place to fight the Vampires that tried to kill me.”

Yuliy frowned as Ryoko assumed a fighting stance. As he stepped into position in front of her, he noted how heavy the bamboo sword was, and how fiercely Ryoko’s brown eyes were glaring at him. It made him just a little bit nervous. “Should we be wearing any padding?” He asked cautiously.

Ryoko didn’t answer. She let out a cry and pounced at Yuliy, bringing her shinai down in a swift two-handed chop. Yuliy quickly braced his own practice sword above his head with both hands and the two shinai came together with a loud _ CLAP! _Ryoko staggered back and seemed surprised by her own ferocity. Then she swung at him again, her weapon whistling in a horizontal arc toward Yuliy’s left side. He deflected her by holding his blade upside down and pushing her away, wincing as the effort forced him to strain his freshly healed pectoral muscles. 

Yuliy took a few steps back as Ryoko circled, searching for weaknesses in his guard. Now that he understood that she meant business, he struggled to recall what she had told him about the principles of kenjutsu over lunch on the day they went to the Library. Understanding his opponents was an essential step in defeating them. Yuliy knew that Vampires fought like wild animals without fear, so he was wilder and feared nothing when he faced them; Ryoko, however, was an angry girl, a creature that Yuliy had never in his life ever firmly understood. 

Ryoko grew impatient waiting for him to attack. She struck the ground with the tip of her shinai and shouted, “Come on! What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t want to hurt you!” Yuliy snapped back. He had no doubt he would, if he wasn’t careful. Even while recovering from a gunshot wound he was still stronger and faster than Ryoko, no matter how well trained she was with a big unwieldy bamboo sword. 

“Don’t give me that crap!” Ryoko came at him again. The sounds of their blades clashing echoed around the empty dojo as Yuliy blocked her furious swings. She continued to goad him by shouting, “Why won’t you take me seriously!? Pretend I’m a Vampire or something!”

Yuliy could feel his self-control slipping. The effort of defending himself, along with the confusing mess of truths unraveling in his mind, was becoming almost too much for him to bear. Why _ didn’t _ he just unleash his rage on Ryoko, if that was what she wanted?

After all, wasn’t it her fault that he was even here? If she had never come to the Department to do whatever job she was assigned to do, they never would have uncovered her connection to the Vampires hiding in Tokyo and Yuliy could have carried on with his mission to find Yevgraf. He would have been able to meet with his brother and reason with him without having to defend the Annex from the Vampires’ assault. He could have even learned what the Ark was from Mikhail, and discover why the Vampires and the Professor had sought his village out all those years ago... 

A change came over Yuliy’s face, and his body language changed. Ryoko recognized the feral look in his eyes as the same one she had seen at the Annex and realized that perhaps she had pushed him too far. Their roles reversed as she was forced to walk backwards and repel his wild charge. Then with a roar he swung at her with enough strength to break the bamboo of their shinai and knock both of their practice swords to the floor.

Yuliy was still for a moment, staring at their splintered weapons and breathing heavily. Through the opening of his happi, Ryoko could see blood beginning to seep through the bandages on his chest. She _ had _ pushed him too far and now his wound had reopened.

“Yuliy,” she said, stepping forward with one hand upraised. “You’re bleeding…”

Faster than anything she’d ever seen before, Yuliy lunged at Ryoko and pinned her arms to her sides. His face was red with exertion and his eyes, as blue as ever, glared down at her wrathfully as if she had done him some personal wrong. Through the anger she could also see a deep sadness, and even though he held her hard and fast, she was not afraid.

As if he were watching from another room, Yuliy saw himself seize Ryoko. He had finally gotten her to stop hitting him, and now he was going to teach her a thing or two about getting in his way. She was close enough that he could see the tendrils of dark brown hair that clung to her forehead with sweat and feel her breath brush against his face. She smelled sweet, like an apple, and met his gaze without flinching. 

“Yuliy,” she said again, gently. “Let me help you.”

With a start, he let her go. The cloud of confusion and anger faded. What was he thinking? Nothing that had happened was Ryoko’s fault and it was wrong of him to try and blame her for it. He put a hand to the bandages on his chest, and when his fingers came away they were red and damp with blood.

Ryoko ushered Yuliy to her room, directed him to sit on her comforter, and went looking for the first aid kit that her teacher had on hand to treat the minor scrapes and bruises that arose during practice. When she returned she found that Yuliy had already shrugged off the happi and removed the bandages. Taut scar tissue had appeared where his gunshot wound had been. 

The bandages had rubbed Yuliy’s skin raw during their duel, but he hadn’t bled that much. Ryoko sat down beside him and used an alcohol wipe to gingerly clean off the blood, then applied an antibiotic ointment to his skin to prevent an infection. It was the same kind of ointment that Hanada had given her for her hands, and though it was effective it had a sharp medicinal smell that made them both wrinkle their noses. As she closed the jar she smiled sadly and said, “It’s too bad that we don’t have some of that plant balm. I liked it a lot more than this stuff.”

Yuliy nodded, and remembered that the balm was not the only thing he had left in the Annex. “I can always order it again,” he replied. The scarf his mother had made for him was not so easily replaceable. 

As Yuliy’s expression became thoughtful, Ryoko guessed that he was thinking of the battle in the Annex. She still had questions for him about that night, and she hoped that their impromptu contest of wills in the dojo had made him more receptive to answering them. 

“Yuliy,” Ryoko began cautiously, packing up the first aid kit. “Did you… Did you know one of those Vampires that attacked us the other night?” She closed the box and then looked up at him. He was watching her seriously. “You called him by name. It was Mik…”

“...Mikhail,” Yuliy said. “Yes. I know him.” He glanced away from Ryoko, and she knew he was hesitating. Then he confessed, “He’s my brother.”

Ryoko couldn’t help it. She gasped. “Your brother?” 

“Yes,” Yuliy replied. 

“Your brother is one of them.” The idea of not just losing a loved one to one of those monsters, but seeing them _ become _ a Vampire made her heart hurt. “Yuliy, I’m sorry.”

Yuliy didn’t quite know how to respond, but he felt a little relieved to tell Ryoko the truth. “I thought he was dead for a long time,” he explained. “He protected me from the Vampires when they came to the village. I only recently learned that he had survived.”

Ryoko shifted position on the blanket to face Yuliy more directly. “Is your brother… Is he like you?”

Yuliy tilted his head slightly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Ryoko swallowed. Yuliy was different, somehow, from ordinary people; the doctor had said as much and she had seen the evidence with her own eyes. She reached over to brush her fingers over the scar on his chest. Yuliy’s body was warm, and he had a slight sweaty smell to him after exercising. Ryoko felt her cheeks flush and her heartbeat quicken with unmistakable attraction but immediately quashed it down. Now was _ certainly _ not the time. “I mean, you were shot but it’s already healed, and you can fight Vampires even without a weapon…”

Yuliy seemed to understand what she was asking. “Our mother was a human,” he explained. “And our father, like the rest of our tribe, was a Sirius. When I was younger I didn’t understand that being a Sirius made me different from other people. When I got older, the Professor taught me more.” A shadow passed over Yuliy’s face as he stared at his hands in his lap. He had never questioned how the Professor had known so much about the Sirius, but now that Yuliy knew about Willard’s secret search for the Ark, he was determined to find out why. “As for my brother,” he added, “I don’t know how being a Vampire may have changed him. I wish that I could get close enough to him to find out.”

Ryoko, feeling bold, reached out again to place her hand over one of Yuliy’s in a sign of solidarity. “Is it possible to cure somebody if they become a Vampire?” She asked hopefully.

“I don’t know,” Yuliy answered honestly. “I’ve never heard of it happening before.”

Ryoko thought for a moment. “What about the Ark?” She proposed. “The Doctor said yesterday that it could grant wishes, right? Something like that would be powerful enough to get your brother back. I’m sure.”

Yuliy raised a brow. “How long were you listening to us from the hallway?”

Guiltily, Ryoko flushed. She withdrew her hand to wave away his accusatory tone. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop! I was coming to check on you--and I just overheard--it was an accident! Really!”

To her surprise, Yuliy smiled. “It’s fine,” he said. Then he asked quietly, “Do you really think that I could use something like the Ark?”

“I know I would rather you use it than the bad guys,” she told him. He chuckled. 

Ryoko really liked Yuliy’s infrequent smiles, and she wished that he laughed more. Maybe in another time and place, she could have been someone to make him happy.

Ryoko’s blush deepened as her mind went again to her completely uncalled for feelings of attraction toward Yuliy. Even if they weren’t caught up in a fight for their lives, they barely knew each other and he probably didn’t even consider her much more than an acquaintance. She couldn’t even imagine how he would react if she told him about Dorothea’s little plot to get them together.

The longer she sat beside him, however, the more Ryoko wanted to convince herself that it was worth a shot. Yuliy had finally opened up to her and even seemed to value what she thought of him. As she leaned closer to him, allowing their shoulders to touch, he didn’t move away. He watched her curiously as she silently steeled her nerves and raised her face toward him.

“Hey, Yuliy,” she began. “Have you ever…”

She didn’t get to finish the thought. Somewhere across the house a phone began to ring.

* * *

Ryoko nearly slid across the kitchen floor as she ran into the room, looking frantically around for the phone. Her instructor had installed it on the counter and unintentionally hidden it behind a knife block, which spoke to how much it was actually used. Before she could pick it up, the answering machine beeped and she could hear her father’s frantic voice from the speaker.

“Ryoko!? Ryoko, are you there!?” He sounded hysterical. “Ryoko, please, pick up!”

It took her a moment to work how to answer the call. “Dad! Dad!” She cried into the phone. “Dad, it’s me!”

She could hear him practically weeping. “Oh, thank God! Ryoko, are you alright!?”

Her throat tightened hearing the desperation in his voice, and her eyes began to fill with tears. “Yeah, Dad, I’m okay.” Hearing footsteps behind her, Ryoko turned to see that Yuliy had followed her into the kitchen. Then Dorothea and Jiro came into view in the doorway behind him, frowning. She asked her father, “How did you know I was here?”

“Agatha couldn’t find you anywhere after the fire at the University,” the Baron bawled. “I was so afraid that you were hurt, or those people had taken you somewhere…” Those people had to be the Department, Ryoko thought. What had Agatha told him? “Then I called Okamoto. He told me that you were at his house but he didn’t tell me anything else. Are you alone!?”

Ryoko’s mind raced. If Agatha had bugged her phone, she had probably also bugged her father’s. She had to be very careful about what she told him. “Y-yes,” she said. “I’m alone.”

“I’m so relieved to hear your voice, Ryoko,” the Baron said, and sighed heavily. “Agatha is already on her way to bring you home.”

Ryoko’s heart nearly stopped in her chest. Wide-eyed, she repeated, “Agatha’s on her way here?”

Dorothea and Jiro immediately burst into action, but as she listened to them run through the halls of her teacher’s home, Ryoko felt paralyzed. She thought that they would have been safe here.

“Yes,” her father said. “I’m leaving my office now and I will meet you there. Oh, Ryoko…” He groaned. “I can’t bear to think that I almost lost you.”

Ryoko bit back a sob. “I-I’m sorry that I worried you, Dad.” She hung her head and turned away from Yuliy, who was still listening to her a few feet away. “I should get ready to go now… I’ll see you at home, okay?”

Though she could hear her father protesting, Ryoko ended the call and unplugged the phone from the wall. Before she faced Yuliy again, she had made up her mind about what she had to do next. 

“Agatha is on her way,” she told him, even though he had heard her say it already. “We have to clean this place up and make it look like you guys were never here.”

Yuliy nodded. They went to his room and collected the bag out of the wastebasket of bloody bandages. They could hear Dorothea next door, coaxing Philip up off of the floor. “Come on, kiddo,” she said energetically. “Time to hit the road.”

As they walked by the open door, Ryoko could see Dorothea helping her doped-up comrade to his feet. Then they crossed the house to Ryoko’s guest room and she stuffed her clothes into the garbage bag. From there, Yuliy followed Ryoko out into the garden, where she looked around for a suitable place to hide the evidence. She guessed that the Vampires would be able to sniff it out if they tried to bury it or put it in the tool shed. Finally, they carefully climbed down the slope at the edge of Okamoto’s property to the river bank. Ryoko pried a few smooth stones out of the mud and dropped them into the bag. When she was done, Yuliy tied it closed and then threw it as far as he could out into the water. As she watched it sink beneath the surface, Ryoko hoped whichever nature spirit guarded this stretch of the Dashi River forgave them.

Quickly they scrambled up the bank to the garden and back into the house. The front door was open and Ryoko could see Dorothea helping Philip hobble toward an undoubtedly stolen utility van idling just beyond the gate. Jiro was in the back, laying down a blanket for Philip to lie on. He’d also tossed in a bag of supplies, probably left by the doctor for them to use. 

Yuliy leapt barefoot down the front steps but stopped and turned as he realized Ryoko was not with him. She hesitated in the front doorway with her hand on the frame.

Dorothea looked over her shoulder at both of them. “Let’s go!” She called. “We don’t know how long we have until the enemy gets here!”

“I...I’m not coming,” Ryoko said, loud enough for her voice to carry across the courtyard. Dorothea looked surprised, and Jiro climbed out of the back of the van to frown at her. Yuliy took a step back toward the house, his eyes searching her face beneath furrowed brows.

“Ryoko...” he said, as if trying to think of a way to change her mind, but Ryoko was determined.

“She’s expecting me to be here,” she explained. “If I’m gone they’re just going to keep looking for me. Besides, I need to stay to protect my father from those monsters.”

Yuliy started up the steps toward her. “I’ll stay with you,” he began, but stopped as Ryoko shook her head.

“You need to get to the Professor and find the Ark,” Ryoko told him sternly. Then her expression softened. “But thanks anyway.”

“Let’s go, Yuliy!” Dorothea shouted. She had already helped Philip into the back of the van and climbed into the front passenger seat. 

Yuliy looked back at Dorothea, then up at Ryoko, unsure of the right thing to do. At the same time, Ryoko decided that she wouldn’t get a better chance than this to act on her budding feelings. She seized both sides of his face, squeezed her eyes shut, and kissed him forcefully on his slightly open mouth. 

The van’s horn honked sharply and Ryoko relaxed her hold on Yuliy. His blue eyes were wide with astonishment but she could not tell if he had liked it or hated it. She really didn’t want to know. “Go!” She exclaimed, giving him a gentle push in the direction of the van. 

Yuliy stumbled backward off of the steps, then turned and sprinted to the van. Ryoko did not wait to watch them drive off, but ran into the house to finish cleaning up any trace the Jaegers had left behind. She hurriedly folded up bedding and stuffed it into closets, hid the doctor’s supplies under the sink in a bathroom, and flung the broken bits of bamboo swords into the garden shed.

Thirty minutes after the Jaegers left, she stood in the kitchen wiping sweat from her brow and heard a knock on the front door. She felt her body go cold with fear and wondered how she was going to pull this off. 

Agatha was waiting outside, wearing her characteristic sunglasses and holding a parasol. Ryoko’s heart thundered at the sight of two suited flunkies standing behind her in the courtyard. Beyond them through the gate she could see a black car idling. For a moment, she regretted staying behind. Then she inhaled and opened the door. 

“H-hello, Agatha,” she said softly. 

“Miss Naoe, what a relief it is to find you safe and sound,” Agatha replied in a sickeningly sweet tone. “What, may I ask, are you wearing?”

Ryoko couldn’t believe what she was hearing. After everything that had happened, was Agatha really worried about her outfit? “I borrowed this from my teacher,” she answered truthfully. 

“Mister Okamoto, was it?” Agatha inquired, peering over Ryoko’s head. “Is he home?”

“No,” Ryoko replied. “He had to go out of town unexpectedly.”

“That is too bad,” Agatha hissed. “I would have liked to thank him.” Though her sunglasses lenses were pitch black, Ryoko could imagine her cruel red eyes staring down hatefully. “You must have been so frightened, Miss Naoe. We are so grateful you had someone to turn to after the fire.”

Cutting through Ryoko’s fear was overwhelming confusion. There had been a fire? Perhaps they had burned the Annex to cover up the evidence of the attack. Did Agatha not realize that Ryoko had been there alongside the Jaegers? Or did she just not care?

Ryoko was uncertain of what she should do. She could reveal to Agatha that she had regained her memory--but she did not want to risk getting her memory involuntarily erased again. This time they might even decide to just outright kill her. She just had to survive long enough to find her father and tell him that he was in danger, and then get them both out alive.

Yuliy and the other passengers were silent as Jiro sped the van westward out of the quiet Tokyo suburb of Sagamihara. The road followed the Sagami River for a short time, then they passed through several small towns wedged between low, thickly wooded hills. Other drivers on the road were forced to stop short and honk their horns as Jiro drove recklessly to put as much distance between them and their pursuers as possible. 

“Careful!” Dorothea warned him as he used the shoulder to pass several cars that were not driving as quickly as Jiro would have liked. “Don’t get us pulled over.”

Jiro slowed down, and after a little less than an hour they had entered Yamanashi Prefecture. Small towns and green fields stretched out on either side of the expressway, a dramatic shift from the heavily populated city they had just escaped. It was unfortunate that none of the Jaegers were in the right mind to enjoy the change in scenery.

Another hour went by and the rest of the Jaegers still had not said a word. In the back of the van, Yuliy sat with his back against the metal grid that separated the front seats from the rear. Stray tools that had belonged to the owner of the van rolled about and bumped into Philip, who lay still on the blanket where Dorothea had deposited him. He did not look at all well; his normally pale skin was nearly translucent, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. His breathing sounded strained to Yuliy, and his blonde hair was darkened by sweat. 

Yuliy checked the bag of supplies for water, but only found bandages and pain medicine. He rapped on the metal to get Dorothea’s attention and said, “Philip needs water.”

Dorothea twisted awkwardly in her seat to peer at them, and frowned. “He doesn’t look good,” she agreed. She told Jiro, “I think we can afford a few minutes to stop and get a few things. We’ll probably need gas soon, too.”

They pulled off the expressway onto a town road. Jiro drove the van past a gas station toward a feed supply store where several similar white vans were parked in the lot, then departed for the gas station on foot. Dorothea went into the feed supply store to see if they had water.

Yuliy waited in the back with Philip and tried not to jump at the sound of other people walking past the windowless van. It was difficult not to wonder if his team had really had managed to elude the Vampires--and what had happened to Ryoko when their enemies had found her alone.

He could not help but feel like he should have tried harder to convince her to come with them. But the more he thought about it, the more he believed that if he had been in Ryoko’s position he would have made the same choice. Yuliy just had to hope that she knew what she was doing and could hold out until the Jaegers returned.

They would be returning, wouldn’t they?

There was a knock on the van’s rear doors, and then they opened to let in nearly blinding sunlight. Yuliy squinted to see Dorothea lifting a pair of paper bags into the back of the van. “They didn't have much,” she said. “But we’ve got some water and some snacks.”

She tossed a cold bottle of water to Yuliy. He helped Philip to sit up and drink, then tore strips of jerky into bite-sized pieces for him to eat. 

“Where are we?” Philip groaned, raising an arm to block out the light.

“I’m not sure,” Dorothea answered. “A couple hours outside of Tokyo. We’re making good time.”

Yuliy dug through the supply bag again to pull out a hastily packed washcloth. Philip poured cool water onto it and wiped his face and neck. He sighed and said, “I feel like shit.” 

Dorothea frowned sympathetically. “Hang in there. We’ve probably got another four, five hours to go.”

“Where are we headed?” Philip asked. He winced as he folded his knees out of the way to allow Yuliy to climb out of the van. 

Dorothea answered, “Mount Haku. We’ll meet Fallon on our way there.”

“Mount Haku?” Philip rubbed his temples. “What’s at Mount Haku?”

“The Professor,” Dorothea said solemnly. “And someone else that he really thinks that Yuliy should meet.” 

She turned to face Yuliy, her head tilted to one side and her bright eyes twinkling mischievously. He met her gaze stoically. “I don’t understand,” he told her. “We should be reaching out to V to help us combat the Vampires in Tokyo.”

“Worried about your girlfriend?” Dorothea asked. “I think she can hold her own long enough for us to get ourselves organized.”

“What? Girlfriend?” Philip sat up straighter. 

Yuliy crossed his arms and refused to look at either of the other Jaegers. He was annoyed that Dorothea had said anything because he did not want to talk about it. She insisted on teasing him, however, and said, “Ryoko gave our boy here a good-bye kiss before we left. It was very romantic.”

“A KISS!?” Philip exclaimed so energetically that he started coughing. He had a hard time catching his breath, which concerned Dorothea enough that she dropped the subject and helped him to drink more water. Then Jiro returned with a canister of gas to fill up the van, and they resumed their journey to Mount Haku.

Yuliy sat with knees against his chest, staring carefully ahead at the white wall even though he knew Philip was watching him from where he lay on the van’s dusty floor. At least the other young man’s color was improving after something to eat and drink. Yuliy had no appetite. 

Who was this person that the Professor wanted him to meet? He could not imagine that they were more important than the Organization’s obligation to exterminate Vampires wherever they could be found. At least when they met with Willard again, Yuliy would have the chance to ask him all of the burning questions that he had struggled with since his encounter with Dr Hanada. 

When it seemed that Philip had fallen asleep, Yuliy finally allowed his thoughts to turn back to Ryoko. Despite the deliberate lack of romance in his life Yuliy understood that people kissed when they cared for each other, and up until that moment he had no reason to believe that Ryoko cared about him beyond what their shared circumstances required. He would have guessed that he had in fact given her plenty of reasons to resent him by lying and endangering her life. 

Yuliy sighed, closed his eyes, and rested his head against his knees. Her kiss had caught him completely off guard and now he was not sure what he thought about it. He knew that he would not have kissed her of his own volition because he had never considered romance a possibility with her, or with anyone else. His entire life had been devoted to revenge. 

Ryoko had smelled sweet like an apple when she kissed him but Yuliy remembered little else about it. He didn’t understand why she had done it, or if she expected something from him in return. He supposed they could talk about it the next time that they met--but it would probably be an awkward conversation at the very least. If Yuliy said something that she didn’t like, he imagined that she might try to fight him again. 

What would she want him to say? Would she want him to reciprocate her feelings? Yuliy was not even sure that he was capable of that, at least for as long as he was hunting Vampires and seeking out the enigmatic Ark. He decided to lay down and try not to think about it since he already had so much on his plate. Yet as the van of four weary Jaegers drove on to Mount Haku, Yuliy wondered if one day all of the monsters had been slain and the mysteries had been solved, could he at least try?

* * *

12:00pm, Setagaya

Ryoko had spent the ride home in Agatha’s black car staring passively at her hands and hoping that Vampires weren’t capable of smelling fear. Her father’s evil secretary spent the long drive on phone calls or checking emails; it was as if Ryoko didn’t even exist. It must have meant that Agatha didn’t consider Ryoko a danger to the Vampire’s undercover operation. Why would she? Ryoko was relieved that Agatha hadn’t wiped her memory, at least, but she still had no idea what the Vampires were going to do with her next.

When they finally pulled into the driveway in front of her father’s mansion, Ryoko sprang up the front steps and threw open the front door. 

“Dad!?” Ryoko called. Her voice echoed forlornly through the house. Then the Baron appeared in the doorway to the dining room and ran toward his daughter with his arms open wide. She couldn’t remember being hugged so tightly by him since she was a little girl. 

Agatha could barely conceal her disgust. “Yes, little Ryoko is home now, safe and sound,” she sneered. “I told you, you didn’t have to worry.”

Ryoko ignored her and wept into her father’s shoulder. “Dad, I thought I would never see you again!”

“I would never let that happen,” the Baron promised. He released Ryoko and took a step back to tell her, “After Agatha told me what those black-hearted criminals were up to, I couldn’t believe what I’d done!”

“Criminals?” Ryoko asked, perplexed.

“They were thieves, Ryoko!” Her father declared. “Years ago, at that same university, there was a professor who was caught red-handed exporting treasures out of Japan. Even though he was arrested and imprisoned, Willard and his cohorts stepped in to take his place!” He shook his head. “I should have known all along… Willard and I have been friends for years, and I always knew he may have been too adventurous for his own good, but I never thought it would be anything like this!” 

Ryoko was as stunned by her father’s accusations as she was by his theatrics. “Dad, that’s not true!” She objected. “They’re not thieves! They’re just…” Vampire hunters? She couldn’t tell him that right now, not in front of Agatha and her bloodsucking flunkies. Glancing toward her father’s secretary, Ryoko caught her smiling toothily. 

“Not only are they thieves, they’re also weapon smugglers,” Agatha sneered. She removed her sunglasses to flash red eyes at Ryoko. “The police discovered quite a stash in their basement this morning. Who knows what could have happened if those guns got into the wrong hands.”

The Baron let out a cry of dismay. “To think, we almost gave them money from the Fund! What would your mother say!?” He clung to Ryoko’s hands and asked her, “Daughter, will you ever forgive me?”

Ryoko could not believe what she was hearing. If Agatha convinced her father that the Jaegers were a threat, Ryoko worried that she wouldn’t be able to change his mind in time to get him to safety. “You can’t listen to her!” She said desperately. “We’re in danger!”

Genzo took a step back from Ryoko. “I thought that you might be afraid of reprisals. That is why Agatha has helped me to hire new bodyguards, to protect you and the house until we know that those crooks have been apprehended.” He looked toward the figure of a man that had appeared in the entrance to the dining room, and Ryoko froze. 

It was Mikhail.

She knew now that he was Yuliy’s long lost brother, but he had also tried to kill her and the other Jaegers alongside a gaggle of Vampire goons. Now he was in her house. Had he come to finish the job? Ryoko was not going to let him. She held tightly to her father’s arm and tried to pull him further away from the door. “How did he get in here!?”

Her father frowned, disturbed by her reaction. “It’s all right, Ryoko!” He said, raising his hand to motion for her to calm down. “He’s not going to hurt you! Mr Jirov--”

“He’s one of them!” Ryoko shouted. She gave up on trying to pretend that she didn’t know she was surrounded by Vampires. She held on to her father’s lapels and told him, “Agatha and these guys are all monsters! They tried to kill us!”

“Ryoko, get a hold of yourself!” Genzo was astonished by his daughter’s outburst. “Agatha is a hard working, indispensable employee! How could you say such a thing?”

Ryoko recoiled as Agatha put a hand on the Baron’s shoulder. “She’s clearly disturbed, Genzo,” she purred. “She might even need to go to a hospital.”

With horror, Ryoko saw a strange, far-away look enter her father’s eyes. He frowned and asked, “Do you really think so, Agatha?”

“I do,” Agatha replied. “Unless she can promise to be a good girl and hold her tongue. You don’t need to be around that kind of stress right now, do you?” She smiled. Agatha stood just behind the Baron so he did not see her mouth widen unnaturally, and her pink tongue slide across a row of sharp fangs. Ryoko could see it, and understood the message immediately.

Agatha had done something to her father, something to keep him obedient so that the Vampires could use him for whatever they were planning to do in Tokyo. They would not mind killing him, however, if Ryoko did not keep her mouth shut. Again, she felt like she was going to be sick, and covered her mouth with her hands.

“I-I’m sorry, Dad,” Ryoko stammered, backing away from Agatha’s cruel smile. Behind her, the ‘bodyguards’ that Agatha had brought seized both of her arms in cold, impossibly strong hands. Ryoko fought against their grip but it felt like she was trapped in an inescapable nightmare with no way out. “I-I won’t say it again.” Her voice cracked as she begged Agatha, “Just don’t hurt him!”

Agatha addressed her directly. “Whether or not I hurt him is up to you now isn’t it?” She asked coldly, “Where are the Jaegers?”

“I don’t know!” Ryoko cried.

Agatha didn’t seem to believe her. Her red eyes gleamed. “Wrong answer.”

Ryoko screamed in anguish as Agatha turned her head at an inhuman angle as if to bite right through her father’s throat. 

Then Mikhail stepped forward. “Come on, Aggie, she doesn’t know,” he said flatly. Agatha paused. Mikhail continued, “Why would the Jaegers tell her where they were going? They would have known you’d try to find it out.”

Agatha’s body made several terrible, jerky motions as she reverted to her usual humanlike appearance. She wiped a bit of saliva from the corner of her mouth and scowled at Mikhail. “I wasn’t really going to eat him,” she snapped. “Can’t I have a little fun?”

Mikhail said nothing. Ryoko slumped onto the floor as the Vampires let go of her arms. She looked up at her father, who still appeared dazed and completely ignorant of the situation happening all around him. 

“Why are you doing this?” Ryoko asked hoarsely. She was exhausted of being afraid. “Why don’t you just kill us?”

“Because despite your best efforts, Miss Naoe, your family is still useful to us,” Agatha answered. “And if you want to stay alive you’ll continue to do as we tell you.”

Agatha straightened her clothes and her hair. “All right. I’m going back to the office. I’ve got the graveyard shift.” She smiled over her shoulder at Mikhail.

He frowned and tilted his head to one side. “Did you just tell a joke?”

Agatha waved her hand dismissively as she stepped out and the two vampire guards stood on either side of the front door. A few seconds later, the Baron shook his head groggily. He blinked blearily at Ryoko and asked, “Honey, why are you on the floor?”

Ryoko stood up and dusted herself off. “I just tripped. That’s all.” She took her father by surprise as she hugged him again. Over his shoulder she openly glared at Mikhail and began to imagine all of the different ways she could take him down.

* * *

5:30, Hakusan

The Jaegers had stopped briefly at the entrance to Hakusan National Park to join their final member, Fallon, who also drove a sport utility vehicle that was more suitable for ascending a mountain. He was devastated by the haggard constitutions of his teammates, and fawned over Philip so much that the young man lost his temper. The bumpy back roads they were forced to travel over did little to improve Philip’s mood, and he complained loudly about Fallon’s driving from where he lay across the back seat. 

Jiro also sat in the back row while Dorothea rode in the front passenger seat, leaving Yuliy to settle in with their sparse luggage in the truck’s boot. He did not have any patience for Fallon’s boisterous and boyish behavior, which made the other man’s one-sided excitement to see him rather awkward. 

The sky was overcast, but the view of the setting sun from the road on the slope of Hakusan was breathtaking. Yuliy sat up and stared out of the rear window at the fire-orange clouds spread out over the miles of dark forest below. He half remembered similar views from his childhood, and the peaceful sight helped to put him at ease. The other Jaegers also fell silent as they spared a glance for the spectacle. 

When the last runny red light of the sun had faded, darkness descended on the mountain. No star could penetrate the blanket of cloud cover and there were no lights on the road. Then at half past eight, Dorothea pointed out a cluster of buildings illuminated by aged yellow lights just ahead and above them. “That must be the temple,” she said, sounding tired. “I can’t wait to get stop driving for the day.”

The other Jaegers murmured their agreement. As they came closer, Yuliy was able to pick out the shapes of the small cluster of buildings that had been constructed on the flat, grassy shelf that seemed to be so far removed from the rest of the world, but the details were still unclear to even his superhuman eyes. 

Fallon pulled up alongside a small, square, slat-sided two story building on the edge of the silent settlement and turned off the engine. There were curtains across all of the windows but the Jaegers could see the lights come on as someone inside the residence made their way from the second floor to the rear door. It was Willard.

He seemed well-rested, even comfortable in a dressing gown and with a pipe in his mouth. Dorothea sounded annoyed when she greeted him, “Sorry to interrupt your night, Professor. Do you have anywhere we can put Philip down?”

Willard was immediately sheepish. “Yes. Of course. This way.” Jiro supported Philip up the short steps through the door and disappeared into the house. Yuliy opened the rear hatch and breathed in deep lungfuls of warm, clean evening air until Fallon came around in front of him to start unloading their baggage. When they had finished emptying the SUV, Fallon covered it haphazardly with a tarp and then they joined the rest of the Jaegers inside.

The inside of the residence was about as luxurious as the Annex and in dire need of an update. The floor and walls were both paneled in dark polished wood, and most of the furniture was also wooden, but mismatched. The rear door entered into a kitchen with appliances that had yellowed it age. Directly in front of the door were stairs leading up to the second floor, where Yuliy and Fallon heard the others settling Philip down for the night. 

They dumped their bags unceremoniously in the front room of the house, which appeared to serve as a living room and dining area. The front door had several heavy locks set into it. A large threadbare rug had been laid down several decades earlier, and there was an old cathode television in one corner sitting in a nest of jumbled cords that Yuliy guessed were attached to the satellite dish he had seen on the roof. In the center of the room was a kotatsu with a ragged quilt and several flattened cushions scattered around it on the floor. The whole house was permeated with the unfamiliar scent of its lone inhabitant, though Yuliy could also detect the remnants of the Professor’s tobacco lingering in the air. 

They heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to see Dorothea appear in the kitchen.

“Where is the Professor?” Yuliy asked, his earlier calm replaced by the nervous fear that Willard would somehow escape him again and leave all of his questions unanswered.

“Jiro and the Professor are having a bit of personal time,” Dorothea replied elusively, raising a finger to her mouth as if to signal for silence. The sound of angrily raised male voices barely muffled by the ceiling above them betrayed the exact nature of their ‘personal time’, and Dorothea grimaced. “Shall we put the kettle on?” She asked loudly. “Do you think there’s anything to eat in here?”

Behind them, someone entered through the front door. Yuliy turned to see a man in his sixties dressed in a windbreaker that smelled strongly of garden dirt and cigarettes. He carried grocery bags in either hand and scowled at the Jaegers, but did not seem surprised to find them in his home. “I’ve got your dinner right here,” he said gruffly and raised one bag toward Dorothea. 

Cautiously she crossed the room to take it from him and found the bag was full of plastic-wrapped instant noodle dishes. “Thanks,” she said, sounding surprised. “You must have heard that we were coming from the Professor. I’m Dorothea. You must be..?”

The man studied the Jaegers in his living room with narrow eyes beneath thick, grown-together eyebrows and scoffed. “Your damn Organization ruined my life, and you don’t even know who I am.” He began to walk toward the kitchen. “My name is Akasaka.”

Dorothea frowned, trying to place the name, but Yuliy knew immediately who the man was and snarled. Even as he leapt across the room to tackle Akasaka against the wall, Yuliy fought the urge to hand all of his self control over to his raging animal instincts like he had done while defending the Annex. He couldn’t rip Akasaka apart before he learned why he had led the Vampires to his village, but he had no qualms against hurting the old man to get the information that he wanted.

Dorothea and Fallon were too slow to stop him, but Akasaka reacted to Yuliy’s attack with surprising ease. He stepped aside and Yuliy’s right shoulder crashed painfully into the wall, rattling the entire frame of the house. Then Yuliy grabbed at Akasaka with his left hand, but the old man deflected the blow and went for a knife hanging from his belt. The two struggled to overpower each other while the other Jaegers circled and shouted at them to stop.

“Why did you do it!?” Yuliy howled. He had a hold on Akasaka’s right wrist and could hear the bones grind against each other as he squeezed with all of his strength. “Why did you betray the Sirius!?”

Akasaka did not seem troubled by the pain. The color had risen on his wrinkled, sun-tanned cheeks and Yuliy could smell alcohol as he breathed heavily and grinned. “I knew it as soon as I saw you,” Akasaka grunted. “You had to be one of Sachi’s boys.”

Hearing his mother’s name shocked Yuliy as effectively as a bath in ice water, and Akasaka seized the opportunity to yank his arm free and uppercut savagely into Yuliy’s stomach. The younger man doubled over as the wind was knocked out of him, but Akasaka continued casually into the kitchen as if they had never traded blows. 

Dorothea, still holding the other bag, gasped, “You’re Professor Akasaka, from the University!”

“Formerly,” Akasaka growled as he filled a kettle with water from the tap and then set it on the stove. “You Jaegers made sure I received an early retirement.”

Yuliy, still wheezing, straightened up and demanded, “How did you… know… my mother?”

Akasaka did not say anything for a few pensive moments. Then with his back to the others, he finally replied, “Sachi was my student, many years ago.” He turned to face Yuliy, and his eyes were hard. “I didn’t betray her, boy.”

Fallon looked between Yuliy and the disgraced anthropologist, obviously curious but also concerned. “Look,” he began, reaching out to put a large hand on Yuliy’s shoulder. “We’ve all had a long day. Maybe this can wait until the morning.”

“No!” Yuliy knocked Fallon’s hand away. “I’ve come all this way to finally find out the truth about what happened to my village and the Ark. I’m not waiting any longer.” 

He had to wait a little longer, since Akasaka refused to speak further before they’d eaten. Fallon and Dorothea seemed satisfied with their instant noodle dishes, eating sleepily at the low table in the living room without even tasting it, but Yuliy was too nervous to touch the cup of ramen in front of him. Upstairs, they could still hear Willard and Jiro talking, but they had stopped shouting and their words were impossible to distinguish. Akasaka hand-rolled cigarettes and glanced up every once in a while while he licked the papers, then cleared his throat. 

“Woman, would you mind opening a window?” He asked gruffly. Dorothea frowned but stood up, clearing their dishes and opening the window over the sink. Akasaka pulled an ashtray out from under the table and lit one of his cigarettes with a match before taking a long draw. Then he turned his attention to Yuliy. “So, are you the younger one, or the older one?”

“What?” Yuliy said, not understanding.

“Sachi had two boys,” Akasaka snapped impatiently. “Which one are you?”

“I’m Yuliy,” Yuliy answered. “The younger one.”

“Hmpf,” Akasaka grunted and took another drag. As he exhaled, the smoke stung Yuliy’s eyes and he knew the stink would linger on his clothes for days. “Like I said, your mother was a student of mine. She was an unforgettable girl.” Akasaka’s voice grew hoarse with emotion. “I was very sorry to hear that she died.”

“She was murdered,” Yuliy said sharply. “Vampires came to my village looking for something called the Ark of Sirius. Do you know what it is?”

“I’m getting to that,” Akasaka glowered at Yuliy as he tapped the ash off of his cigarette. “Sachi accompanied me on my field work to gain experience working with remote populations. I think that she wanted to get involved in advocacy and protecting the way people lived. Of course that all went out of the window after we visited the Sirius and she met your father.”

Dorothea sighed wistfully. “She gave it all up for love?”

“And it got her killed!” Akasaka barked. “I told her that even if she learned their language and cooked their food she would never belong with the Sirius. If Aleksei hadn’t been a royal prince, I doubt the Sirius would have ever let her stay.”

He paused to search for an agreeing gesture from Yuliy, but the young man stared at him in stunned silence. After a moment, Yuliy asked, “A royal...prince?”

“Do you really not _ know _?” Akasaka was incredulous. “Your father was the last living descendent of the Sirius royal line, but now I suppose that title falls on you.” He smirked. “Prince without a tribe.”

Yuliy shook his head, confused. “What does that have to do with the Vampires and the Ark?”

“Everything,” Akasaka answered. “The Sirius people believed that their tribe was entrusted by God to guard the Ark and keep it hidden from the world. Only the royal family could use its power to protect their people.”

“Power? What kind of power is this Ark supposed to have?” Dorothea frowned. “Is it some kind of weapon?”

“Aleksei never told me what it is,” Akasaka said. “But he knew that the Sirius would not be able to keep it hidden from the world for much longer. The next time that I saw him, your father was on a mission to find a new hiding place for the Ark.”

“Did he succeed?” Yuliy asked.

“If you had to ask, then I guess that means he never made it home,” Akasaka said softly. He ground the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray. Yuliy could feel Dorothea and Fallon’s sympathetic gazes as he stared sightlessly down at the table. He tried to examine his feelings toward the death of his father, but came up with nothing. Yuliy had been so young when Aleksei left that he did not even remember what the man looked like. 

“If he really left with the Ark all that time ago,” Yuliy said, raising his eyes to Akasaka once more. “How did the Vampires find our village?”

Akasaka lit another cigarette and countered, “Why don’t you ask the man that found you out in the snow?”

* * *

8:00PM, Tokyo

The Baron and Ryoko shared a quiet dinner that had been picked up and delivered by one of their guards since their housekeeper had gone home for a few days to take care of a family emergency--or at least that was what Agatha had said. Ryoko feared that something worse could have befallen Tomoko but didn’t dare to bring it up. 

After they ate, she told her father that she was tired and wanted to go to sleep. He seemed to understand, and from the dark bags under his eyes Ryoko reckoned that he could also use some rest. She felt terribly guilty for scaring him the last few days, but in classic doting father fashion he refused to be angry at her. She supposed that he was just happy to have her home and that the real consequences would come later...if there was a ‘later’ once the Vampires were done with him.

As Ryoko bathed and dressed for bed she tried to figure out what they wanted with her father and his company. Was it money? Power? Fame? As far as she could tell, the Vampires already had money and influence beyond what the NTC could supply. Maybe she could talk to her father to get a better idea of what they were working on because even under Agatha’s control he was still a smart and capable man. Ryoko had been able to break the spell so perhaps he could, too.

Ryoko discovered that the only clothes in her room were the ones she had left behind when she had gone to university in Osaka, including a matching set of sunny yellow pajamas. It wasn’t her most empowering outfit, so she decided to pull an old cardigan over it in case she encountered one of their vampire sentries.

The world was quiet as Ryoko padded barefoot down the hall. Her parents’ room was across the house. She remembered how perilous the journey had seemed when she had been a child seeking them out after a bad dream, and how similar she felt now trapped in an actual waking nightmare. 

Ryoko approached the double doors that led into a seldom-used study and saw that one of the doors had been left open. Then she heard soft snoring coming from inside the room. At first she was surprised, guessing that her father had gone inside and fallen asleep. Then as she cautiously pushed the door further open she saw that it was not her father who was sprawled across one of the Victorian-styled couches in front of the unlit fireplace, but Mikhail. 

Instinctively Ryoko recoiled, then steeled her nerves and forced herself to step further into the room. Mikhail’s chest slowly rose and fell, and his eyes moved restlessly beneath his bruise-colored eyelids. It was impossible to forget the image of him as a knife-wielding killer, but she had to admit that he did look a little less intimidating with a throw pillow hugged against his chest. Maybe she could even reason with Mikhail and ask him for help--he was, after all, Yuliy’s brother before he had ever been a vampire.

Ryoko reached behind her back to close the door with a loud _ snap! _Mikhail stirred and turned his head to take her in. Then he yawned.

“I thought vampires only slept in coffins,” Ryoko said, one hand still on the door handle so that she could flee at the first sign of danger. “Or do they hang upside down from the ceiling, like a bat?”

Mikhail sat up and raised a hand to push his hair out of his face, but Ryoko caught a glimpse of a smirk in response to her impertinent question. When he met her eyes again, however, his expression was deadpan. The only sound he made was the brushing of his clothes against each other as he stood up and walked toward the door. Ryoko did not budge. 

“Wh-where do you think you’re going?” She demanded. “I want to talk to you!”

Mikhail did not seem impressed. He loomed over her, his height boosted by the heels of his heavy black boots and said, “Move.”

Ryoko would not be menaced any longer, especially not in her own home. “No!” She said sharply. “I won’t move! Not until…” She swallowed. “Not until you tell me about the Ark.”

Mikhail’s reaction was swift and violent. His hand went around Ryoko’s throat and he slammed her forcefully backward into the door. The doorknob dug painfully into her spine and Ryoko struggled to keep her feet on the floor as Mikhail slowly lifted her off of the ground. His eyes had gone from a lifeless grey to a rage-fueled red in an instant.

“Who told you about the Ark?” He snarled.

Ryoko tried to pull his fingers off from around her neck with both hands but he was inhumanly strong. “I know that you’re Yuliy’s brother, and that you used to be a Sirius, too…” She could still breath enough to speak, but the hold on her windpipe was slowly tightening. “The vampires...why do they want the Ark?” She didn’t understand why Mikhail was working with them, instead of with his brother. “Yuliy...he wants to find it...to cure you…”

Mikhail seemed taken aback, and let her go. Ryoko wavered but stayed upright, leaning heavily on the door as she coughed. She rubbed her neck and watched as Mikhail turned away from her and stared into the empty fireplace. He muttered something in a language that Ryoko did not understand, and she asked, “What was that?”

Mikhail did not respond, but glanced at her over his shoulder and then returned to the couch. If he believed that she would go away if he ignored her, Ryoko thought, he was badly mistaken. She stepped away from the door and stood on the other side of the coffee table in front of the couch. 

“Do you know where it is?” She continued, raising her voice with frustration and adrenaline. “Is it here, in Japan? Is it why the vampires are trying to control my dad’s company?”

“It’s got nothing to do with you!” Mikhail exclaimed, annoyed. Again, he seemed surprised that she had gotten under his skin, but quickly recovered his apathetic calm and added, “Kershner doesn’t believe in fairytales. He’s here for something else.”

“What is it?” Ryoko urged him to tell her more.

Mikhail shrugged. 

“Are all Sirius this stubborn!?” Ryoko asked, stomping her foot. “This is going to help Yuliy and the Jaegers defeat the vampires! Don’t you want him to succeed?”

“I want him to survive!” Mikhail snapped, baring his pointed teeth at her. He gripped the couch cushion on either side so tightly that Ryoko could see the white of his knuckles through his deathly pale skin. He reminded Ryoko of a cornered animal, and she feared what he could possibly be holding back. They stared at each other, equally unwavering, for what seemed like a long time. Then Mikhail relented by letting go of the cushion and confessing, “Everything I’ve done since the day Yuliy was born was to protect him.”

For a fleeting moment, Mikhail looked utterly agonized and Ryoko was overwhelmed with sympathy. She sat down in a chair opposite Mikhail and leaned forward. 

“I suppose that there really is no use in fighting fate,” he said softly, lolling his head on the back of the couch like a bored teenager and closing his eyes. 

Ryoko frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means…” Mikhail thought about it while pressing the heels of his hands firmly against his eyes. “It means that all of the horrible things I’ve done to keep Yuliy away from the Ark...didn’t make a difference.”

“Why did you try so hard to keep him away?” Ryoko asked.

Mikhail brought his head up and replied, “If Yuliy ever wields the Ark...he will die.”

* * *

When Jiro came downstairs alone, he looked wrung out by emotion. Dorothea got up from the table and offered to make him something to eat. Yuliy darted past both of them and ran up the stairs two at a time. Some small part of him feared that the Professor would vanish again before he had the chance to ask his only question:

“Why did you do it!?” Yuliy shouted fervently as he ran into one of the top floor bedrooms. A cool evening breeze blew in through an open sliding-door entryway to a small balcony that was built on the front of the house. The Professor sat on the floor with his back on the sliding door and one knee drawn up against his chest, and his other leg extended on the balcony. Like Jiro, he appeared to be exhausted but Yuliy had no quarter. He repeated, “Why, Professor!?”

Willard looked up at Yuliy with a deep sadness in his eyes. “I take it that Akasaka told you the truth.”

“I don’t understand how…” Yuliy struggled to find the words through the waves of anger and nausea that threatened to consume him. “How you could have led them to my village and then raise me like your own!” It was beyond cruel. For years Yuliy had sought revenge for his tribe against the vampires, but the man responsible for leading them to the Sirius had been with him all along. 

From the stricken look on the Professor’s face, Yuliy guessed that he was well aware of what he had done and had been dreading this day for a very long time. “I wish I had a better reason,” Willard said quietly. “But there isn’t one. Not for something like this.” He closed his eyes, drew in a breath, and looked up at Yuliy. “I led the vampires to the supposed resting place of the Ark because I wanted to see its power for myself.” He paused and studied the hand he rested on his thigh. “They paid me well for my work and I never thought… I never thought about what would happen to the people that stood in their way.”

Yuliy was shaking with fury. “Were you ever going to tell me the truth?”

“I think that a part of me hoped that it would never come to that,” the Professor admitted. “Even though I know that would have been impossible. As long as you were determined to destroy the vampires, I knew that you would eventually step onto the path that would lead you back to the Ark. It’s your destiny.”

Yuliy knew what Willard was doing. He was offering Yuliy information on the Ark in order to detour the conversation away from the crimes of the past. Yuliy would tear the Professor’s heart out with his teeth before he ever forgave him--but first he needed to find out what the other man knew.

“Tell me everything.”

* * *

“The Ark will kill him?” Ryoko asked tremulously. “How do you know that?”

“Any Sirius who has ever used the Ark has died,” Mikhail said. “In the legends passed down from our elders, there are a number of great heroes who sacrificed themselves to save the Sirius from calamity by wielding the Ark.”

“Maybe...Maybe those guys just weren’t cut out for the job!” Ryoko protested. “Yuliy’s different!”

“They were strong and powerful Sirius kings!” Mikhail retorted. “And Yuliy is half human. If anyone was underqualified, it’s him.” He smiled ruefully at Ryoko, and she thought she caught a glimpse of his mad fury once more. “My father was a fool.”

Ryoko didn’t follow. “Your...father..?”

“He married a human woman because he believed it would end the Ark’s curse once and for all,” Mikhail said. “But instead he doomed us all, and abandoned us to die.”

There were some deep seated issues to be worked through here, Ryoko realized. Too bad she had gone to school for business and not family psychology. At least she had gotten Mikhail talking. “I don’t think I understand,” she said. “What do you mean that the Ark was cursed?”

Mikhail hesitated. He had already said too much. “It wasn’t cursed,” he muttered. “It _ is _ a curse.” He glared at her and growled like a dog guarding a new bone. “And it has nothing to do with _ you _.”

Ryoko lunged forward and slapped both of her hands on the table. “You’re just like your stupid brother!” She cried. “Just let me help you, dammit!”

Mikhail’s eyes widened. “Just like Yuliy?” He asked softly.

“Yes,” Ryoko tapped her foot on the floor with irritation. “And I’ll tell you right now, I don’t tolerate any close-mouthed macho bullshit from him either. Just earlier today I had to convince him to take me seriously by fighting him in my old sensei’s dojo, and it worked because afterwards he really opened up to me about you, and your mom, and…” She caught herself before she admitted to kissing Yuliy, but the memory brought a blush, unbidden, to her cheeks.

Mikhail’s head was tilted to one side as he listened to her with a blank, brainless expression. Then he let out a single, sharp laugh and asked, “Are you in love with him, or something?”

“No!” Ryoko nearly jumped to her feet. She knew she was crushing on Yuliy, but it was far from love...wasn’t it? She calmed herself and continued, “But I want to help him. I want to...protect him, just like you do.” She clasped her hands together and pleaded with Mikhail, “If you can help me get rid of Agatha and the other vampires in Tokyo that are trying to control my dad, I’ll help you figure out a way to save Yuliy. Please.”

* * *

The Professor got unsteadily to his feet and led Yuliy to a small wooden desk in the corner. Strewn across the top were aged handwritten journals and loose sheets of typewritten pages. Yuliy also recognized sketches of the star charts he had seen in Akasaka’s book, and crude copies of the symbols the Sirius had used to pattern their clothing.

“According to the old stories passed down from the tribe’s elders,” the Professor began, sifting through the papers. “Only the Sirius kings could ever learn to use the power of the Ark, and even then only during times of great tribulation.”

“Akasaka mentioned that,” Yuliy replied. “But if only the Sirius kings could use it, why were the Vampires seeking it out? Why wouldn’t my father have used it to protect us, instead of leaving to hide it?”

“Because it isn’t actually that simple,” the Professor said. He found what he was looking for, a Xeroxed page from a book that had been marked up in red pen. “During his time with the Sirius, Akasaka learned that only certain descendants of the royal line were ever chosen to bear the Ark.”

Yuliy was surprised. “Chosen?”

“They are born marked by destiny,” the Professor elaborated. “Something innate that allows them to enforce their will upon it during times of great peril. Otherwise, they are consumed by its power almost immediately.” He set the sheet aside and told Yuliy gravely, “Your father told Akasaka that you were born with such a mark, and he wanted to spare you from that fate. I did not know it at the time that I found you, but so did I.”

Yuliy frowned, “A mark..?” He studied his hands, then touched his face in order to find some kind of physical feature that would have affirmed his connection to the Ark. 

“It’s not on you anymore,” the Professor said evasively. “A doctor here in Japan removed it shortly after we met. I don’t think that you would remember him.”

Yuliy knew immediately. “Doctor Hanada.”

Willard was aghast. “How did you..?”

“Dorothea has been meeting with him,” Yuliy said, hurling his fellow Jaeger under the bus without a second thought. “She started looking into the Ark after I came to you to get help tracking Yevgraf.”

“Is that so,” the Professor remarked, tight-lipped. “Yevgraf was the one who hired me to find the Ark.”

“And what about the other vampires in Tokyo?” Yuliy asked quietly. “What is your connection to them?”

He sensed the Professor’s hesitation, but they both knew he had nowhere else to hide. The older man finally said, “It is strictly a...professional relationship.”

Yuliy scowled deeply. “What does that even mean?”

The Professor sighed. “The Organization’s mission to protect mankind from Vampires is no longer as clear-cut as it used to be. You know firsthand the difficulty of operating in secret, in a world where there are so few shadows left to hide.” He paused, and Yuliy nodded begrudgingly in agreement. “Kershner is not the only enemy who has infiltrated the higher echelons of human society. If he were to suddenly vanish, there would be a serious investigation and we could all be exposed.”

“Wouldn’t that be worth it?” Yuliy asked. “To save all of the people that are in danger?”

“It would be worth it if we had any hope of succeeding,” the Professor replied. “Look at us, Yuliy. I’ve already failed this team once, and you were all lucky to escape with your lives. I won’t be taking the risk again.”

“You coward!” Yuliy barked vehemently. “What about Ryoko!?”

* * *

“What exactly do you think you can do?” Mikhail asked, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. 

“I don’t know!” Ryoko said. “My dad is loaded and has all kinds of connections. I’m sure we can come up with _ something _!”

Mikhail gave it a few moments’ thought. “I guess if we get caught, the worst thing that Kershner can do is kill you.” He shrugged again. “I’m already dead.”

Ryoko gulped. “Y-yeah,” she said unenthusiastically and put a hand to her neck. “Doesn’t sound so bad when you put it like that.” Mikhail smirked at her. “So why don’t you start from the beginning and explain that whole cursed Ark thing?”

Mikhail rolled his eyes. “I told you, the Ark isn’t cursed. Yuliy is.” He learned forward and lowered his voice. “When he was born, we knew he was destined to bear the Ark because he had the mark.” Mikhail raised a hand and passed his fingers over his right eye. “My father saw it and knew that his plan to end the burden on the Sirius had failed. Yuliy was destined to save the Sirius from some horrible danger, and that in order to do so, he would have to die.”

Ryoko could imagine how helpless and frustrated she would have felt in their father’s position. What great lengths would she have gone to in order to save her own child from something so awful? 

“He believed if he could get rid of the Ark itself, Yuliy would be spared,” Mikhail continued. “The outside world wanted to take it, but if it was gone, the Sirius would be safe.” He shook his head. “When he never came back and the Vampires found us anyway...I thought that I could still protect Yuliy by destroying every last link to the Ark I could find.”

He paused. Ryoko leaned closer to listen. 

“Yevgraf used me to keep looking for the Ark after he didn’t find it in our village,” Mikhail said. “We hunted down Sirius that had gone to the outside world to find a better life, and Yevgraf tortured them to find out if they knew anything about the Ark’s location. Then I killed them to make sure Yuliy never found them or the truth about what I was doing.”

Ryoko sat up covered her mouth, horrified. Yuliy had told her that he’d only recently learned that Mikhail was alive--but he didn’t even know that his brother had been murdering the survivors of their tribe in order to perversely protect him. Mikhail was capable of some truly terrible things and Ryoko was beginning to regret offering him the olive branch. Was it too late now to make a tactical retreat, or would he kill her in order to cover his tracks?

“I’m sure you did what you had to do…” She began, wondering if the other vampires that Agatha had posted at her house would come to her aid if she started screaming, or if they would just let Mikhail eat her.

“Don’t patronize me,” Mikhail snapped. “You wanted me to tell you what it would take to save Yuliy. Now you know. What are you going to do about it?”

* * *

The Professor was surprised by Yuliy’s outburst. “Are you talking about Miss Naoe?”

“And her father,” Yuliy added quickly. “Isn’t he your friend?”

“Genzo has been my friend for many years,” Willard conceded. “He is a smart and capable man, and he knows that it is in his best interest to bow to the pressures of his board and retire.”

Yuliy understood only half of what the Professor had just said. “Do you mean that he should let them win?”

“I mean that he should consider his daughter’s future,” Willard replied pointedly. 

“Ryoko can consider her own future,” Yuliy snapped back. “She’s not afraid to stand up to them. She defended Philip from a transformed thrall all on her own, and found us a place to stay after the enemy attacked us at the school. I won’t...” Yuliy’s brain caught up to his mouth and he stopped talking, unsure about what exactly it was that he wouldn’t do. The Professor seemed to be suggesting that the Jaegers abandon Ryoko, but something else about it didn’t sit well with Yuliy. He felt like he owed her his fielty, in a way that was different than the loyalty that he once offered the Professor. “I won’t let her down.”

Willard’s eyebrows rose, and then his expression softened. “What does that girl mean to you, Yuliy?”

Yuliy almost told the Professor the truth: he wasn’t really sure. Then he remembered that Willard had enabled the genocide of his people and turned away. 

“It’s none of your business.”

Willard looked down at the desk. “Of course.” He offered Yuliy a piece of paper that stood out, stark white against the aged yellow of his other notes. “I’ve already begun a list of sites that may have been suitable hiding places for the Ark. Akasaka has been most enlightening on the interpretation of Sirius literature.” 

Yuliy accepted the sheet, taking in the names of landmarks around the world. He even recognized a few. “You think that my father hid the Ark in one of these places?” He asked.

“If he was seeking a meaningful location that would honor the sacrifices of his predecessors, then yes,” Willard answered. “These were all sites named in Sirius lore as the final resting places of ancient hero-kings that used the Ark to save your people from certain doom.” 

Yuliy folded the paper in half and tucked it into a pocket. “Thank you, Professor.”

Willard nodded. “It’s the least I can do.”

* * *

10:30pm, Tokyo 

Ryoko sat alone in the study, sitting up on a couch with her legs folded against her chest and her forehead pressed into her knees. The entire situation where she found herself was unreal. She was so sad and afraid, but could not afford to be indecisive. She had made a deal with a devil to save herself and her father from certain doom.

The couch creaked as she straightened her legs out in front of her, stood up, and crossed the room to a nook with a strategically placed house phone. Years ago, her father had insisted on lines all across the house, before pagers had come into vogue and then cell phones made them all but obsolete. She was relieved when she picked up the receiver and heard the dull beep of a dial tone. Then all she had to do was remember the number that she was trying to call.

Fortunately, Dr Hanada’s office number remained the same, but his office hours had ended at five. Ryoko silently admonished herself for trying to call him in the middle of the night, but opted to leave him a message anyway. “This is Ryoko Naoe,” she said, knowing how odd it would be for a fully grown woman to be calling her pediatrician years after she had seen him last. “I just had a question for Dr Hanada, regarding a house call he made a few days ago… Could he please call me back in the morning?” Then she left her house number, and hung up.


	7. Chapter Seven

Friday 18 August 7:08 am 

Ryoko was startled awake by the harsh ring of the house phone. She did not realize she had fallen asleep in the study, and as she struggled to find the source of the noise she rolled right off of the seat in the phone nook and onto the floor. Quickly she straightened up on her knees and nearly knocked the entire phone off of the wall as she hurried to answer it before it alerted everyone else in the house.

“Hello!?” She croaked, her throat dry and head aching from the previous day’s ordeal. “Naoe residence, Ryoko speaking.”

“Miss Naoe,” Dr Hanada replied calmly from the other end of the line. “I hope you’ll forgive me for returning your call at such an early hour. I have to say, I was very surprised to hear from you.”

Ryoko cleared her throat to buy herself time to think. “Oh, yes, um…” She massaged her forehead with the fingertips of her free hand, hoping it would help her muddled thoughts come together. “I’m back home now. I mean, with my father.”

Dr Hanada was silent for a moment, then said, “Ah. That is good to hear. Did you have something you needed to ask me?”

Ryoko swallowed nervously. She wished she could ask him directly to tell him everything he knew about Yuliy, the Vampires, and the Ark, but she knew that others had to be listening. “Yes,” she began cautiously. “It’s… It’s actually about another patient of yours who is a very dear friend of mine.”

Hanada said nothing, so she continued, “I’m worried that he may be in danger. He was born… Someone told me that he was born with some kind of mark, something that probably wouldn’t hurt him if he left it alone, but I think that…” Ryoko hesitated. Was she really doing the right thing? “But I think that if he continues on this path he’s chosen it will kill him. Do you… do you know what I’m talking about?”

Hanada was silent for so long that Ryoko feared they had been disconnected. Finally, he said, “Yes, Miss Naoe, I know what you are talking about. However, you should know that I cannot share my patients’ private medical information.”

“Oh,” Ryoko said softly. “I’m sorry, I only…”

“But,” Dr Hanada cut her off. “I do want you to be assured, Miss Naoe, that the friend you fear for is no longer in any danger from the condition with which he was born. I saw to that many, many years ago.”

Surprised, Ryoko asked without thinking, “What? How?”

“This condition, or mark as you called it, was no match for modern medicine,” Hanada replied. “It was removed, much like a tumor.”

Ryoko could not imagine just what Dr Hanada had pulled out of Yuliy. “What… What happened to it?”

“It was a… unique, ah, object,” Dr Hanada answered. “Quite unlike anything I had ever encountered. A solid black, spherical mass that inhabited the patient’s right orbit without affecting vision or brain function. I would have liked to have studied it, but unfortunately the patient’s guardian preferred to dispose of it himself.”

Realization woke Ryoko all the way up, and she stood quickly. “Thank you, Dr Hanada!” She exclaimed. “I really, really appreciate you helping me out.”

She heard Hanada start to ask her something, but she abruptly hung up and ran out of the study. She headed for the stairs, not caring that she still wore her sleep-wrinkled pajamas. As she rounded a corner in the corridor she collided with a cold, hard, human-shaped obstacle and fell for the second time that day onto the floor. 

It was Mikhail, who frowned down at her as if she were a large, particularly disturbing pile of dog shit he had discovered the sidewalk. “Where are you going?” He asked gruffly.

Ryoko was not troubled. “I have great news!” She said as she picked herself back up. “Yuliy is going to be okay!” She dodged around him and sped down the stairs, slipping in her socks on the smooth tile floor of the front hall as she ran into the sitting room with the great black butsudan. Mikhail followed, his boots resounding heavily on the stairs. When he entered the room, he found her standing before the shrine with the doors flung open, and the small velvet ring box in her hands.

Still not understanding, Mikhail said nothing until Ryoko turned to face him and opened the ring box. Then his eyes grew wide and he crossed the room in three quick strides to snatch it from her. 

“How do you have this?” He demanded. 

Ryoko thought that if Mikhail was so upset by the odd black orb, it had to be the ‘mark’ he had told her about. It also meant they had to keep it out of the Vampires’ hands or else they would be that much closer to the Ark. “I have no idea,” she told him truthfully. “I found it in here a few days ago. I think that when Dr Hanada removed it from Yuliy’s eye he handed over to his ‘guardian’...” 

She trailed off, thinking about who that possibly could have been. It was obvious to Ryoko that all of the Jaegers had been working closely together for years, but only the Professor would have been old enough to have taken in a young Yuliy following the destruction of his village. Yuliy had told her himself that the Professor had been the one to teach him about the Sirius as he grew up. She could not help but wonder how much the Professor knew about the Ark before he had ever saved Yuliy’s life.

Before she could bring her suspicion up to Mikhail, her father appeared in the doorway. He had come to investigate why the sitting room had been opened, and looked surprised to see Ryoko and Mikhail standing together in front of the butsudan. He was already dressed and straightening his tie.

“Ryoko, you’re up,” he remarked. “How are you feeling?”

“Great, dad,” Ryoko answered quickly. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes, I’m going into the office for a few hours,” the Baron replied. “Will you be alright here alone?”

Ryoko felt a sudden pang of fear at the thought of her father returning to work alongside Agatha and her ilk. She couldn’t stand to let him out of her sight. “Actually, can I go with you?” She asked. He hesitated, and she added, “I won’t get in the way. Maybe I can help Agatha with some paperwork or something.” 

She clasped her hands together and tried to use the same tricks that had won her father over when she was younger: big baleful eyes and a tremulous tone that he could not resist. “Please, dad. I think getting to work would really help me take my mind off of things.”

Genzo tried to look stern, but folded after just a moment of hesitation. “Alright, Ryoko. I think I would feel better having you in the office with me as well. Get dressed, the driver is waiting.”

“Thanks dad!” Ryoko said and left the sitting room. 

Genzo walked over to close the butsudan and did not notice Mikhail slipping the ring box into his jacket pocket. Instead, the Baron made a show of ensuring the photographs of his relatives and his wife were all in their proper place before turning to Mikhail and saying proudly, “This butsudan is quite beautiful isn’t it?”

Mikhail said nothing and shrugged.

* * *

Shiodome City Center, 9:00 am

After she had changed into something appropriate for the office, Ryoko and her father rode quietly to NTC’s headquarters in the back of a black town car. Mikhail rode up front with the driver, who Ryoko was surprised to see was human. He dropped all three of them off before the front entrance before going to park in the garage beneath the building.

As they rode the elevator up to the floors that belonged to the NTC, Ryoko tried to think of how she was going to figure out what the Vampires were up to in Tokyo and how her father’s company fit into it all. When they arrived, she excused herself to the washroom while the Baron went into a meeting. When she came back out, Mikhail was waiting.

“Do you make a habit of waiting outside ladies’ bathrooms?” She asked, annoyed that he seemed to still be keeping tabs on her. “It’s creepy.”

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” He asked her, equally annoyed. 

“I’m finding out what Agatha and her cronies are up to!” Ryoko replied, dropping her voice to a harsh whisper. “What do they want with my dad? What are they planning in Tokyo?” She narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to know, would you?”

Mikhail shrugged indifferently. Ryoko sighed. “Then I guess it’s too much to hope that they keep all their evil plans locked up in some office in this building either.” If only it were that easy.

After a moment, Mikhail reached into his jacket pocket and offered her an electronic key card. On one side was the photo of a man with inhuman red eyes in a dark suit. Underneath it was his name, Tanaka Eizo, and a barcode. There was a magnetic stripe on the other side, and a hole where a clip would have secured the card to a lanyard. There were also dull brown spots on the key card; when she brought it closer to her face, Ryoko realized that it was dried blood. She nearly dropped the card and hissed, “What am I supposed to do with this!?”

“In the basement there’s a computer with information that you might find interesting,” Mikhail answered. “Use that card to take the elevator down to the R’n’D levels.”

“Interesting? What do you mean?”

“Hell if I know,” Mikhail snapped. “Isn’t that up for you Jaegers to figure out?”

Ryoko frowned. “I’m not a…” Then she stopped herself, and tucked the key card into her shirt pocket. “Thanks Mikhail. I guess we’re even now.”

Mikhail said nothing and shrugged.

Ryoko turned away and started walking speedily back to the elevator. Her earlier feelings of helplessness seemed a distant memory, replaced by fright and excitement. She was going to figure this out and save her father, with or without the Jaegers’ help. 

As the elevator came into view, Ryoko slowed down and then stopped. Maybe it would be reckless to go downstairs without anyone knowing where she was headed. Beside the possibility of Mikhail sending her into a trap, Ryoko also had to imagine that the R&D department of a shadowy group of vampires would be guarded with more than a single electronic keypad. Again, she doubled back through the hallways until she found her father’s private office.

There was an assistant posted at a desk outside who recognized Ryoko and seemed genuinely pleased to see her. Clumsily, Ryoko fed her a line about needing to send an email that she couldn’t do on her phone, but the assistant did not seem troubled. She graciously allowed Ryoko to use her desktop and excused herself to get a drink of water.

As she opened up a window for their internal email service Ryoko decided that it was too risky to use her own company email since it was no doubt being watched as closely as her phone. Instead she opted to try and use her father’s email, but was rebuked when it asked for her password. Knowing that the Baron was not the most tech savvy despite his position at the head of a telecommunications firm, she tried the usual suspects like his name, his birthday, and his anniversary. All of them failed, and she bit her lip as she tried to think of what else he would use. After a moment, she typed in her birthday and held her breath as the page refreshed.

She was in! But who was she writing to? She couldn’t remember any of the Jaegers’ contacts off the top of her head, but her father was supposedly good friends with the Professor. She searched Willard’s name and found a chain of messages regarding the Saito Fund and her subsequent assignment to the Anthropology Department. Ryoko was briefly tempted to read through it and discover what her father may have said about her but she had no time to waste.

Quickly she typed a brief message and prayed that it would find its way to the Jaegers. Then she stood up, thanked the returning secretary, and headed for the elevator.

* * *

6:30 am, Hakusan

Yuliy had slept poorly beneath a musty comforter on the floor of Akasaka’s living room, wedged between a snoring Fallon and restless Dorothea. He woke shortly before dawn and carefully stepped over his fellow Jaegers to sit in the grass behind the house and watch the sun rise.

Dorothea had called him inside a short while later for breakfast. Fallon had scavenged Akasaka’s kitchen to produce a dish he called “bubble and squeak” by frying instant potatoes and cabbage kimchi from a jar in a large pan. The spice in the air stung Yuliy’s nose and made his eyes water. Dorothea and Akasaka seemed wary when they spooned the mess over rice, but Philip was uncharacteristically pleased when Yuliy brought him a bowl. 

“No way!” He exclaimed, sitting up from his nest of ratty pillows on the floor of the upstairs bedroom. “My mom used to make this for breakfast all of the time.” He eagerly began shoveling it into his mouth with chopsticks, then coughed. “It’s so spicy! Is that crazy ginger giant trying to kill me!?”

He kept eating it anyway. As Yuliy left his room to return downstairs, he passed the Professor on his way to the bathroom. Their eyes met but neither man said anything.

After breakfast, Yuliy sat at the table with Dorothea and Fallon to hold a lamp while they disassembled and cleaned the weapons that Fallon had managed to retrieve from the Annex after the fire. Then at about nine-thirty, the Professor came dashing down the stairs with a laptop under his arm.

“Yuliy,” he said gravely. “I have just received a troubling message from the NTC. I believe it could be from Miss Naoe.”

Yuliy set down the lamp and stood. “A message from Ryoko?” He asked. “What does it say?”

The Professor set his laptop down on the kitchen counter and beckoned for the others to join them. He had an email open on his screen that Dorothea read aloud:

“Willard. The mysterious efforts of our mutual enemies may soon be coming into light. I expect to find answers in the basement of the City Center. Please return to Tokyo as quickly as you can.”

The Jaegers were silent until Fallon said, “Well, that certainly is troubling.”

“Are you sure that it’s from Ryoko?” Dorothea asked the Professor. “It sounds like it could be a trap.”

“It wouldn’t be a very sophisticated trap,” the Professor replied. “But if it is from Miss Naoe, she would have taken a great risk in trying to send this message to us.”

“What does it mean, ‘in the basement of the City Center’?” Yuliy asked.

Descending the stairs from the second floor, it was Jiro who answered. “The NTC’s main offices are inside the Shiodome City Center, as well as a portion of their research and development department. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was where the Vampires--using the cover of ALMA--are plotting.”

“But what are they plotting?” Dorothea sounded frustrated. “We still have no idea!”

The Professor hesitated, then closed his laptop and said, “We have much to learn from Miss Naoe’s direct example. We...I have cost us dearly by refusing to take action. We should return to Tokyo.”

He met Yuliy’s eyes, and the younger man frowned. Dorothea and Fallon were also taken aback. “You can’t be serious!” Dorothea exclaimed. “We’re outnumbered and outgunned. Do you expect us to charge in like Roosevelt’s rough riders?”

Akasaka finally spoke up from where he sat rolling cigarettes in the front room. “Hey, pup, come give me a hand with this.”

The other Jaegers followed as Yuliy went to join Akasaka in moving the table and rolling up the rug to reveal a trap door in the floor. A cloud of dust rose as Akasaka lifted it up. Under the floor were a dozen hard cases that the vampire instantly recognized: the old man was stockpiling guns.

“Jesus!” Fallon cried. “This can’t be legal, grandpa.”

“I’ve been waiting all these years for those damn bloodsuckers to find me,” Akasaka rebuked. “Do you really think I was going to go quietly?”

Dorothea sighed. “I guess there’s really no excuse then.” She stretched, groaned, and rubbed her backside. “I demand a vacation after this insanity is over.”

The Professor smiled. “Certainly. I think that I owe all of you some time off.” He turned to Akasaka. “Thank you for this.”

“It’s not a gift,” Akasaka snapped. “It’s a loan. And the interest is high. I’ll be coming with you to make sure that you don’t run out on me.”

“Fair enough,” Willard replied. He turned and headed back toward the stairs, where Jiro was waiting.

“You’re going?” The other man asked.

“Yes,” Willard answered quietly. “I need to ask you to stay here with Philip. I… I’m sorry to leave you again.”

Jiro sighed and reached out to squeeze the Professor’s shoulder. “You don’t need to be sorry, Willard. You need to do this. I’m glad you’re not running away anymore.”

* * *

After Ryoko swiped the electronic key card in the reader, she rode the elevator alone down to the basement levels of the City Center. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she imagined the kind of cruel human experiments that the Vampires could be working on right under her father’s nose. Then when the lift doors opened all she saw was a clinically white hallway lined with unmarked doors, and no other souls in sight.

She stepped out and the elevator closed. As she looked one way and then the other trying to decide where to go, Ryoko heard voices approaching but couldn’t tell what direction they were coming from. Impulsively she dashed straight ahead and tried the knobs of several doors. 

They were all locked. The voices came closer. “I’m on a double shift tonight,” one man complained. “Boss has some damn board meeting upstairs. He’s making me pick up the catering.”

“I really can’t stand that guy some days,” a second man replied. “They get it so good while we’re down here sucking cold blood bags. I’ve half a mind to…”

“To what?” The first voice jeered. “Get yourself dusted? You heard what happened to Tanaka. You’re not gonna do shit.”

Ryoko kept going, turning into a short hallway that jutted off the main hallway. There was a lone door with an electronic lock at the other end. Desperately she swiped her card and was relieved as the door clicked open.

Quickly she went inside and closed the heavy metal door behind her. It was so thick that the thralls’ voices were cut off instantly. Ryoko dared to breathe a sigh of relief, then gagged on the awful smell of old blood and formaldehyde that permeated the dark room.

With growing horror, she put her back to the door and began to look around. The tile floor was stained by various fluids dripping from mutilated human cadavers strapped to rows of metal tables that gleamed in the flickering light of flat monitors that covered one of the walls. The faces of the corpses that had still had heads were covered in metal masks, and their limbs seemed sewn on as if they had been salvaged. Ryoko covered her mouth and fought the bile that rose in her throat; she had obviously found the evil lair that she had been searching for.

Trying to remain calm by focusing on her mission, Ryoko reasoned that the computers across the room had to have some kind of proof of the Vampires’ plans. She sidled along the wall, terrified of turning her back on the bodies until she passed another open doorway. The lights in that room were also dark, but she could faintly see the metal frames of gurneys and the lumpy outlines of body bags. 

Ryoko’s heart was beating so fast that she was sure she would faint...But her father’s life depended on her succeeding. Darting the last few feet to the computers, she began pressing buttons wildly to wake up the monitors. 

They hummed to life and the room was illuminated by images of rectangular boxes filled with electronics. She could magnify sections and was able to identify receivers and transmitters crammed in alongside batteries and modems. A list on the side of the screen gave specs on the different components, including the manufacturer. Several parts had been produced by ALMA.

Ryoko realized these had to be the wireless internet boosters that the NTC had posted around the neighborhood, but she doubted that improving connectivity was the Vampires’ real endgame. What were they really for then? And how could she find out?

There was the whirring of an electronic lock behind her as someone swiped their key card at the door. Instinctively Ryoko dove beneath one of the metal tables as the lights switched on and clasped her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound of her own breathing.

Whoever had just walked in was wearing a white lab coat, thick rubber boots, and whistling cheerily. Either the room was too dark or they were too shortsighted to see Ryoko. They also did not seem to notice or care that the computers were powered on. 

“Wake up my lovelies, it’s time for lunch!” The man sang as he dumped a plastic onto one of the tables. An IV bag of blood fell onto the floor and Ryoko was able to see one side of his terribly scarred face when he stooped to pick it up. He sounded old, and had to be deranged in order to refer to chopped-up bodies with any kind of affection. Ryoko watched from beneath the table, sure that she was about to be discovered as he went into the next room to wheel in several IV poles. 

“Having sweet dreams, little one?” The mad vampire crooned as he brought one of the IV poles over to the table where Ryoko lay trembling in fear. She listened to him fiddle with the corpse but was unable to tell what he was doing. Then after a few moments she could hear the body begin to twitch and jitter as if it were alive. 

“So lively!” The vampire said proudly. “You’re nearly ready to leave the nest.” He sniffed. “They grow up so fast…”

Ryoko was not sure how much longer she would be able to hold back the urge to be sick. What the hell was going on here? As the man in the lab coat moved away from the table to attach a blood bag to another cadaver, the first began to move so violently that its legs scraped noisily against the tile floor. The man returned with a note of concern in his voice. 

“Whatever is the matter? Can’t you behave yourself?”

Ryoko heard the creature begin to moan, muffled behind its metal mask. The vampire scientist muttered to himself and went into the other room. While he rattled around searching for something, Ryoko decided that she had better try to make a break for it. She slid out from beneath the table but stayed hunched over, ready to duck behind something else in case the vampire returned. 

She made the mistake of looking down at the body he had been experimenting on. The IV drip was attached to one of its arms, feeding it blood that it could not drink with its own mouth. The undead flesh seemed to fight against the straps that held it to the table, and to her horror, its hands flexed as if it wanted to reach out toward her. Ryoko flinched back, bumping into a second table, and the corpse there began to twitch and moan.

The vampire in the other room called, “What has gotten into all of you today?” He appeared in the doorway with a syringe in one gloved hand and shouted, “Hey! What are you doing here?”

Ryoko answered by screaming and running for the exit. The vampire scientist was surprisingly quick and beat her to it, waving the syringe threateningly. The girl slipped as she tried to change direction and stumbled toward the second room. She tried to push the door closed behind her, but the scientist jammed his arm and upper body through the opening. 

“OW!!! OW!!!” He howled as she slammed the door repeatedly on his face. Again he swung the syringe at her and she threw herself back to avoid being stuck by the needle. Her foe lunged into the room, his fury now plain on his disfigured face. “You little wretch!”

Ryoko moved to get one of the gurneys between herself and the vampire. “Stay away from me!” She shrieked. He lurched forward and she pushed against the gurney with all of her might. The metal frame rattled as it crashed into the vampire and slammed him into the wall beside the door. Ryoko broke for the exit again but found it locked from the inside. She fumbled in her pockets for the key card, then felt someone twist her arm from behind. Then she cried out in terror and pain at the unmistakable needle prick in her neck. 

“Got you!” The vampire cackled. Ryoko fought against him even as the strength left her body and her vision went black. Her last thought was of her father, and if he would ever learn the truth--about ALMA, the vampires, or whatever would become of his daughter.

* * *

5:48pm, Shiodome City Center

The Jaegers had discussed their plan as Fallon drove from Mt Haku to Tokyo. Philip had used the Professor’s laptop to research the City Center’s layout and forward images to Dorothea’s cell. While the NTC’s R&D department wasn’t marked out clearly on any publicly available map, he was able to give them rough ideas of where it might be located in the basement and how they could reach it from the outside. 

Then the Professor extrapolated from known data how many thralls they could expect to encounter inside the building. “I doubt that there will be any hired human security,” he had hypothesized. “The Vampires would consider them too risky to have around. Based on the number of thralls that Yuliy encountered in Akihabara, as well as the size of the team that attacked the Annex, and the size of the property compared to similar compounds that the enemy has held in the past…” He clenched his jaw. “We shouldn’t count on less than twenty-five thralls, and as many as one hundred.”

His pronouncement had been met with silence. Then Fallon said boisterously, “One hundred? So between the four of us that’s just twenty five each.” He grinned at Dorothea who sat in the front passenger seat beside him. “I’ll race you--whoever finishes their share first gets to pick where we go on vacation.”

Dorothea opened her mouth to retort but Akasaka had interjected, “What do you mean, just the four of you? Did you forget who gave you the guns?”

“Sorry old man,” Fallon laughed, but it rang hollow.

“And what about the Royals?” Yuliy asked solemnly from his seat in the rear, among Akasaka’s smuggled firearms. 

“Well, we know about Kershner and Agatha,” Dorothea said, ticking them off on her fingers. She glanced in the rear view mirror at Willard. “Anyone else we should know about, Professor?”

He shook his head and replied, “No, those are the only ones.”

The Jaegers fell quiet again until they re-entered the city. Then Akasaka climbed into the back with Yuliy to begin loading the guns. Fallon’s GPS guided them to the garage beneath the City Center, and the entire crew jumped as he shouted, “What the hell!?”

“What is it!?” Dorothea demanded, bracing herself for the worst.

“Parking rates in this city are abominable,” Fallon explained, pushing cash into the machine posted at the garage’s entrance. “It’s highway robbery. We’re expensing this, right?”

Dorothea groaned and the Professor shook his head wearily. They pulled into the garage and found a space where they could see the door that Philip had recommended without being obvious to anyone on their way out. He had also told them it was likely to be locked and watched closely by security cameras, which meant that their arrival would likely trigger an immediate response. 

“Let’s hope that the civilians have already headed home for the day,” Dorothea said as they climbed out of the car and armed up. She accepted a heavy caliber sniper rifle from Akasaka as well as additional ammunition for her handgun. “Don’t shoot if you’re not sure if someone is human or vampire. We can’t afford casualties.”

Fallon loaded up with a sniper rifle, a submachine gun, and a huge military knife. He frowned at Akasaka, who chose a shotgun. “Are you sure you want to use something like that in an office building, grandpa?” He asked. “Someone could get hurt.”

“Damn right,” Akasaka snapped. “I’m here to do some damage.”

The Professor picked up a handgun, then offered it to Yuliy. The younger man shook his head and said, “I don’t…”

“...Use guns,” the Professor finished for him. “I know you’d rather not, Yuliy, but this time we really do not have a choice.” He handed Yuliy a belt holster and watched him put it on. Then he armed himself with another handgun and looked over their crew.

“Be careful, everyone,” he said. Finally, Dorothea gave wireless earpieces to the Professor, Fallon, and Yuliy, keeping one for herself. 

“Try to get in touch with Philip as soon as you get upstairs,” she told everyone. “He’ll be essential in coordinating our movements once Fallon patches him into the building.” She smiled and nodded. “Good luck, everyone.”

The Jaegers took their positions behind the SUV. Dorothea balanced her sniper rifle on the hood and pointed it at the door into the building. She waited patiently for someone to come out, but they were all surprised when a black town car drove past them and parked in front of it, blocking their view.

A man in a black suit came out of the driver’s seat holding a cellphone to his ear. “Hey, I’m downstairs. Can you bring a cart to the door? There’s no way I can carry all of this in by myself.”

They watched as he went around to open the trunk of the car. Inside were brown bags and metal tins of hot food. After a few minutes the door to the building opened and a second man came out pushing a mail cart.

“Wow, that smells great,” he remarked.

“I know,” the driver replied. “It almost makes me wish I were still alive to eat it.”

That exchange was all the confirmation Dorothea needed to know that the two weren’t men at all, but thralls in the employ of the enemy. She took careful aim and then fired at the driver as he carried one metal tray over to the cart. He screamed as blood, ichor, and white rice sprayed all over his partner, who then got Dorothea’s second shot in his shoulder.

The other Jaegers raced for the door as the vampires overcame their surprise and began to transform. Fallon’s long strides carried him there first and he fired three shots into one thrall’s trunk at close range. Yuliy engaged the other thrall with a spinning kick into his long face. He sprawled back into the mess of rice and Fallon blew his brains out all over the floor. Both vampires’ bodies began to harden and crumble into dust.

Holding the door open, Fallon shouted, “It’s clear! Let’s move!”

* * *

When Ryoko came to, all she could feel was a bone-chilling cold. The world was pitch black. She felt disoriented, and her muscles ached as if she had just gone through one of her sensei’s summer kendo boot camps. She could tell from the sound her breath made that she was in a confined space, and as she tried to move her arms and legs she discovered that the walls were hard and smooth. Panic seized her again at the realization that she’d been tossed into one of the drawers in the vampire scientist’s morgue.

“Hello?” She called out. She was a little surprised that she had woken up at all. Surely now that she’d uncovered their sick little lab the vampires had run out of reasons to keep her alive. Unless that mad scientist intended to use her for his deranged experiments.

“LET ME OUT!!” She cried, seized by terrific visions of reanimated corpses strapped to metal tables and Agatha’s wretched face stretched wide by a grin of too many sharp teeth. “LET ME OUT!!”

Even worse, what if they left her here to die slowly of starvation or suffocation? Desperately Ryoko kicked and pushed against the confines of the drawer as she continued to scream. “IS ANYONE THERE!?” Maybe if she could scream loud enough, someone who wasn’t a demon from hell could hear her. “LET ME OUT!!”

* * *

Yuliy darted past Fallon and into the corridor. Ahead he could see several unmarked doors, and a hall on the left as well as another corridor ahead. The Professor dug the plastic key cards that the vampires carried out of their remains and followed the others into the building. He gave one card to Fallon and said, “Hopefully this will be enough to get you into their security office.”

“Copy that,” Fallon nodded. He ran ahead of Yuliy and raised his gun as he peered around the first corner. Then he moved ahead to the second corridor and gestured the all-clear. Dorothea and Akasaka ran after him and soon all three had disappeared from sight. 

Yuliy tried to focus, suppressing the fury that still boiled in his blood at the Professor who had insisted on joining him as he hunted for Ryoko. 

“We must be careful,” the Professor began. “Their research facilities are likely to be heavily guarded. It might be possible to capture one of the enemy and interrogate…”

Yuliy wasn’t listening. He had started down the short corridor on the left but found the door locked. There was a scanner beside it. He looked over his shoulder at the Professor and demanded, “Open this door!”

Willard hesitated. “We don’t know what’s on the other side, Yuliy.”

“It’s Ryoko,” Yuliy replied. “I can hear her.”

The Professor tilted his head, but couldn’t make out anything. “We have to be cautious!” He reminded Yuliy. “It could be a trap.”

Yuliy let out a snarl and slammed a fist into the wall. “OPEN THIS DOOR!”

Willard recoiled, and for the first time Yuliy saw how the man who had raised him also feared him. Then the Professor’s cool and calculating mask reappeared and he walked past Yuliy to slide the key card into the scanner. 

As soon as the lock clicked open, Yuliy threw open the door. The room beyond was dark and stank of old, stale blood. He knew that it wasn’t Ryoko’s but he could tell that she had been here. From a short distance away he could hear a frantic, metallic banging, and someone calling for help.

He ran through the room and into a second. The lights were also off in here, but it did not matter to his sharp Sirius sight. Gurneys lay strewn about and set into the wall were human-sized drawers. One of them shook violently and he could hear sobbing.

Yuliy yanked on the handle. The metal shrieked as he tore the front of the locked drawer clean off of the wall. Ryoko’s arm came out and he seized her wrist. She fought him even as he pulled her free, her fists pounding his chest and her legs kicking so wildly that she was unable to stand as she cried, “NO!!! Get away from me!!”

Whoever she thought he could be must have frightened her very much. “Ryoko!” Yuliy held her up and shook her to bring her back to the present. Behind him, the Professor found the light switch and Ryoko could finally identify her rescuers. 

She seemed surprised to see them. Her eyes struggled to focus on Yuliy, who felt profound guilt at seeing her red, tear-streaked face, wild eyes, and bloodied knuckles. They stared at each other until the Professor came forward and asked, “Miss Naoe, are you alright?”

Ryoko tried to stand on her own but seemed unable to keep her balance. Yuliy held her steady with an arm around her shoulders. “I’m...dizzy,” she answered slowly. “He stuck me with something, something for the…”

She gasped and looked around. “The monsters! He’s making monsters!” She pointed through the doorway behind the Professor. “In there!”

Willard turned and went into the first room, with Yuliy and Ryoko following behind. When the Professor turned on the lights, Ryoko was shocked to see that the metal tables were now empty, and all evidence of the corpses had vanished.

“They were here,” she said hoarsely, pushing Yuliy away to toddle forward and lean against one of the tables. “These bodies. He was making these...Frankenstein monsters and feeding them blood from an IV…”

To her relief, the Professor did not immediately accuse Ryoko of suffering from a nightmare. He asked, “Who was making monsters, Miss Naoe?”

Ryoko squeezed her eyes shut as the mad scientist’s leering face swam to the front of her mind. “He looked kind of old, he had white hair. His face was messed up, and he only had one eye…”

At the same time, Yuliy and Willard said, “Klarwein.” Both men looked at each other and then quickly away again. 

“He’s a known enemy scientist,” the Professor continued. “He’s been responsible for a great many atrocities, but I have not heard of anything like this. Did these...monsters...seem functional?”

Ryoko shuddered, remembering how one of the creatures had looked as it convulsed on the table in an effort to get to her. What would have happened if it had gotten free? And where had they gone now? “Yes,” she told the Professor weakly.

Moved by Ryoko’s obvious distress, Yuliy took a step toward her. The Professor, however, continued, “How many of them were there?”

“I think… Six?” Ryoko said. “Maybe seven? Not all of them had heads…” Hers was starting to ache now as she struggled to make sense of what had happened just before she had been drugged. She put her hands to her temples as if she could just squeeze her thoughts back into the right order. “But then the computer…”

She turned to face the wall of monitors, only to discover that they too had vanished. All that remained were a mess of wires that dangled from a gap in the ceiling and brackets that now sat empty. 

“It’s GONE!” She shouted. Her legs almost gave out again from the shock. “There was a computer here, I saw it! I saw the blueprints for the boxes…”

“Boxes?” Yuliy asked. 

“Yes those… Those modems that the company installed through the neighborhood.” Ryoko made the shape of a large rectangle in the air with her hands. “They’re supposed to be for high speed internet but I think that ALMA… The vampires, whatever they’re planning has to do with those.” 

Hot tears of frustration came to Ryoko’s eyes. The proof she had of the evil infiltrating her father’s company had disappeared. Now how was she going to convince him to escape?

“Dad!” She spun and told Yuliy, “Agatha! She’s going to kill him!”

“I won’t let that happen,” Yuliy told her fiercely. “Where is he?”

Ryoko massaged her temples. “There’s a board meeting today, I heard one of those vampires in the suits talking about it. He’ll be there.”

* * *

When a white van pulled up in front of the glass-walled lobby, the vampire sitting guard at the front desk scowled deeply in irritation. He had his finger on the intercom before the delivery driver in sunglasses and a baggy brown jumpsuit even made it to the door.

“After-hours deliveries need to be dropped off downstairs,” he snarled. The driver raised one hand apologetically and waved at him from the other side of the door. Under his other arm he had a box.

“Sorry, but I need a signature,” the driver said deferentially into the intercom. With a noise of disgust, the guard stood up. As he walked toward the door, he missed the footage of five Jaegers entering the basement on the series of small screens set into the desk. 

He propped the door open with one foot, careful to stay in the shade of the slight overhang and demanded, “What is it?”

The delivery driver lifted up one of the box’s top flaps and pulled out an uzi. “It’s a reckoning.”

He fired, shattering the glass door and knocking the vampire backward. People on the street screamed and ran for cover as several more men in brown jumpsuits poured out of the back of the white van and raced into the building. Laughing madly, the driver threw his sunglasses aside and followed them inside.

“Hurry, men!” He bellowed as the others began stripping off their jumpsuits to reveal the Hyakko Party’s characteristic costumes. “We’re going to flush these rats out once and for all!”

* * *

It did not take long for Fallon, Dorothea, and Akasaka to find their way upstairs and sniff out the security office. The Jaegers’ experience with infiltration and raids allowed them to execute their strategy with little communication beyond hand gestures; having to babysit Akasaka, however, was wearing their patience thin. When the old man tried to run in, guns blazing, Fallon had to hold him back by the collar of his shirt.

“Are you trying to die today, old man?” He hissed.

Akasaka sneered at him over his shoulder. “It’s the only honorable death for a soldier!”

Fallon shook his head, then nodded to Dorothea. They were crouched around the corner from the office. She was about to dart ahead when the door flew open and three suited vampires raced out clutching walked-talkies. 

“It’s those damn Hyakko bastards!” One of them exclaimed, leading the others down a hall toward the public areas of the building. Falling and Dorothea looked at each other, then jumped to catch the door to the security office before it closed and locked. Inside, they found a small room that was uncomfortably warm from the number of electronics running constantly. Monitors and recorders were stacked to the ceiling on top of a typical commercial control center. The Jaegers filed in with Akasaka standing watch. 

Dorothea put a finger to her earpiece as she scanned the screens and asked aloud, “Philip, can you hear me?”

“ _ Roger _ ,” the blonde boy answered, safe and sound on Mt Haku. “ _ Am I plugged in? _ ”

“Almost,” Dorothea replied. Beside her, Fallon pulled out a small device from a case in his pocket and searched for a spot to plug it in. He pulled one of the computer towers away from the wall and slid it into what seemed to be the correctly-sized slot. 

“Bug is in,” he announced and gave Dorothea a thumbs-up.

“Great. Should be online in thirty seconds.” Dorothea pressed a few buttons to sort through different video feeds. “Have you heard any chatter?”

“ _ There’s been reports of gunfire on the street _ ,” Philip said in her ear. “ _ That wasn’t you guys, right? _ ”

“No, I think that someone else is here,” Dorothea grimaced as she found what she was looking for. In what appeared to be a cafeteria, there were half a dozen men wearing lacquered armor wielding submachine guns from behind turned-over tables facing off against the thralls they had just seen running out of the security office. “I think they’re called...Hyakko, or something?”

“ _ The Hyakko Party!? _ ” Philip shouted, making Dorothea flinch. “ _ What the hell are they doing here? _ ”

“Shooting vampires.”

“ _ Damn. One second. _ ” Dorothea could hear Philip clicking away on the computer. “ _ Alright, I’ve got access to their video feeds now. What a mess. _ ”

“Can you see the Professor?”

“ _ Yeah, he’s with Yuliy and Ryoko in some kind of lab downstairs. I can’t get through to their communicators until they get out of the basement. _ ” He hummed. “ _ Okay, looks like Kershner and his posse are on the NTC floor, with a bunch of other bigwigs in some kind of conference room. I think Ryoko’s dad is with them. _ ”

“Do they know we’re here?” Dorothea asked.

“ _ It’s hard to tell. They don’t seem to be worried about anything. Oh, some thralls just left, maybe to go see what the ruckus is in the cafeteria. _ ”

“Great,” Dorothea said. “That’ll make our extraction so much easier. Let’s go, boys.”

* * *

To the Professor’s dismay, Ryoko insisted on joining them on the search for her father. Yuliy did not seem to have any issue with it. They took the stairs up to the ground level, but they had to exit the stairwell in order to reach the higher floors. As they stepped into a public passageway the rattling sound of gunfire echoed from what seemed to be every direction. 

“Philip! Can you hear me?” The Professor snapped with a hand to the side of his head. For the first time, Ryoko noticed that he was wearing an earpiece. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Yuliy was also wearing an earpiece. They hung back in the doorway as both men listened to Philip’s report, but Ryoko couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then the Professor gestured and Yuliy took Ryoko’s hand to lead her down the hall. 

They turned a corner to find a freight elevator. They punched the up button, and as they waited the Professor explained, “Some members of a terrorist group began their assault on the building almost as soon as we arrived. Their timing couldn’t be worse.” 

“Terrorists!?” Ryoko exclaimed. 

“The Hyakko Party,” Willard elaborated. “It’s unclear right now, but we must consider the possibility that they know the enemy’s true identity. They came armed with military grade weapons, but don’t appear interested in civilian targets or property destruction. They’ve engaged the vampires in one of the cafeterias but have not yet reached any of the upper floors.”

The elevator doors opened and they leapt inside. Ryoko punched the button that would take them to the NTC offices. The elevator slowly began to climb. “This is totally crazy,” she said. “But it’s good, right? The vampires are distracted…”

Willard shook his head. “Not necessarily. We still don’t know what their intentions are. They were also seen killing the security guard in front of the building, which means law enforcement is on their way. Things have become significantly more complicated.”

* * *

The Baron stood pensively at the window of the conference room once more as he waited for the board members to arrive. He was not looking forward to another discussion of his suitability, and subsequent talks over the direction that NTC was headed. Studying his reflection, he did not know how much longer he would be able to argue that he was still in good health. The stress of his daughter’s disappearance had kept him from sleeping and eating, so he looked pale and his clothes hung loosely about him where they had once fit well. He could not entertain thoughts of retirement just yet, not for as long as Kershner circled like a shark that could smell blood.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Kershner and Agatha entered with six men trailing behind. They took their seats without prompting: Kershner and Genzo faced each other at either end of the long black table, and the board members sat three on either side. Curiously, Agatha stood behind Kershner, even though she was supposed to be the Baron’s assistant. 

“Welcome, gentlemen,” Kershner began. He sat with his elbows on the table and his gloved hands entwined in front of him. “Rather than review the minutes from the last meeting I would like to get right to business. Unexpected circumstances have moved the timeline of my pet project up by several months.”

“Pet project?” Genzo asked, annoyed that Kershner had taken charge of the room. They weren't even pretending to defer to the Baron anymore. 

Agatha turned toward the television that hung on the wall behind Kershner with a remote in her hand. She pulled up a computer-rendered image of the Signal Banks that illustrated the electronics inside. 

“Recall, if you please, our promise that the Signal Banks would vastly improve the quality of communications in the city,” Kershner continued, ignoring the Baron’s question. Agatha clicked the remote and a number of graphs appeared on the screen. “The initial data we’ve collected on their use could possibly be very interesting if that was their true purpose.”

“True purpose?” One of their board members, Mr Nakamura asked. At the same time, emergency sirens began to sound outside. 

“To the window if you please, gentlemen,” Kershner requested. Genzo and the board exchanged looks, then moved to the window. They could see a number of police cars in the street below the City Center. Barricades had been placed several blocks in the distance and officers were ushering civilians out of the area. 

“What’s going on down there?” The Baron demanded.

“We’re under attack, Genzo,” Kershner answered matter-of-factly from his position at the head of the table. “Nationalists stormed the building just a few minutes ago. My security have the situation handled, but I believe that the Hyakko Party would actually be the perfect subjects for our experiments today.” He turned to Agatha. “Have them taken outside. Gentlemen, observe.”

* * *

The Chief of Police stood behind the open door of his squad car, glancing over his officers positioned in front of the City Center. In the distance, triage tents were being set up by SDF medical teams to treat victims of the Hyakko Party--but so far there hadn’t been any. Several people who had been working late had escaped the building unscathed. Instead, they had told the police that the terrorists were only engaging with the building’s private security. 

The attackers’ numbers were small but their motives were unknown. The police were also unable to establish communication with the security so they still didn’t know what was going on inside. 

A murmur went up among the officers and the Chief returned his attention to the front of the building. A man in a bloody suit stepped over the shattered glass with his hands raised. Behind him were two more figures supporting a third injured man in recognizable Hyakko Party armor.

The officers looked to their Chief, who considered his options. It was impossible to know if the terrorists had disguised themselves as security and the man in the armor was actually a hostage, or if the situation had been truly contained without the involvement of law enforcement.

He did not have long to think it over. A painful and inexplicable ringing erupted in the Chief’s ear, causing him to cry out. Every one of his officers did the same, tearing at the earpieces wired to their walkie-talkies. The ringing persisted out of their car speakers. The Chief felt as if insects were crawling into his skull and drilling against the backs of his eyes. Desperately, he lunged into his car and powered off the radio. Those officers that were not paralyzed by the pain attempted to turn off their own speakers, but the noise came from all around them.

An officer positioned to the Chief’s right dug so fervently at his ears that the side of his face was torn and bleeding. With tears streaming down his face, the officer screamed and unholstered his gun to point the muzzle under his chin.

The Chief shouted and dove at the officer, but he was not fast enough. The gun went off and the man’s body fell twitching to the ground. The Chief fell to his knees in horror as the sound of more guns began to go off. To his amazement, the suited figures in front of the building did not react to the sound but the man in the armor convulsed as if his body was charged with electricity.

This had to be a part of the terrorists’ plot, the Chief thought. But why? What did they want?

* * *

The board members looked on in horror as below them police officers collapsed or even shot themselves for no apparent reason. The Baron stumbled back and stared at Kershner, knowing that somehow he was involved in this. 

“Kershner, what have you done?” He asked shakily. 

“Don’t be afraid, Genzo, we’re well out of range,” Kershner replied coolly. “Those officers are simply experiencing a short wave audio attack. While prolonged experience can be quite stressful for humans, sound waves are physically harmless.”

“Why are you doing this? You must stop!” Nakamura pleaded. 

“Not yet,” Kershner told him. “There is still valuable data to collect. Our clients will want to know that they are buying a quality product.”

“Clients!?” The Baron stammered, outraged. “What clients!?”

“Well, I don’t want to name any names…” Kershner answered coyly as he stood. “But I’m sure you realize that the military and enforcement applications are nearly limitless. When absolute control becomes as simple as the flip of a switch, civil unrest will become a thing of the past.”

“You’re killing those people!” Another board member cried. “You can’t do this!”

“That is where you’re mistaken, Mr Kato,” Kershner motioned Agatha forward. She had produced a tray with three shot glasses of a sinister looking red fluid and set it before him on the table. “In order to usher in a glorious new age, I  _ must _ do this.”

* * *

The Professor put a hand to his ear just before the elevator doors opened to let them out into the NTC’s office. Philip was passing on a warning. 

“Take care,” the Professor said. “There’s still a team of thralls on this floor.” He pulled out his gun. “Kershner has gathered the remaining civilians in a meeting room on the south side of the building. Your father is with them, Miss Naoe.”

Ryoko was relieved to hear it. As they entered the corridor she asked, “Is he alright?”

The Professor lowered his voice and answered, “I’m not sure, but we must hurry.”

Philip directed them through the rear hallways until they reached a corner that preceded a large open area in the center of the floor. They could see six thralls positioned among the cubicles. Though they weren’t armed with human weapons, Ryoko knew they were still dangerous. She also knew that on the other side of the open area would be the conference rooms, and her father.

“Could we sneak by them?” She whispered. “If they see us, they’ll call for reinforcements.”

The Professor nodded. “Fallon and Dorothea are still on their way up here. We should wait until they’ve arrived.”

Philip said something in their earpieces that made Yuliy stiffen. “We don’t have time to wait,” he said sharply, tearing the device out of his ear and running out from behind the corner. 

“Yuliy, stand down!” The Professor barked, but it was too late. Yuliy leapt on top of one desk and launched himself at the nearest thrall. They rolled together to the floor and the other vampires ran forward.

The Professor cursed. He told Ryoko to stay back before moving into the room and kneeling behind a desk. He aimed his gun over the top and fired at the thralls. One of them took two bullets to the shoulder and began to change. The vampire that Yuliy was fighting had also shifted into its monstrous form and they exchanged furious blows. 

Ryoko wasn’t interested in waiting around for the Jaegers--she needed to find her father. Cautiously, she crept to the edge of the room and crouched like a sprinter waiting for the gun to go off. When she was certain no one had seen her, she took off down one of the aisles between the desks. She made it into one of the halls but as she rounded a corner she crashed into someone coming from the opposite direction. She cried out as she was knocked back onto the floor, but then she looked up to see that it was only Mikhail.

She said, “You have to help Yuliy! He’s in there, fighting the vampires…”

She stopped as Mikhail leveled a gun at her. “Hey!” She exclaimed, confused and frightened. “What are you doing!? I thought--”

He fired into the floor in front of her. Ryoko screamed and scrambled to her feet. She started running again instinctively in the direction of her father’s office. More of Mikhail’s bullets struck the walls and ceiling around her, shattering the glass in hanging picture frames and exploding paper memos out of plastic mail trays. 

Finally, her father’s office came into sight. Ryoko threw herself against the door and fell into the room as Mikhail shot the glass walls to either side. The glass was thick but not bulletproof and huge cracks began to web across its surface.

Ryoko ran to the other side of her father’s desk to the painting of her grandfather and the katana that lay in state beneath it. Behind her, the walls shattered. Mikhail’s heavy boots crunched the glass as he stepped into the room. Ryoko faced him with the sword unsheathed.

“Don’t come any closer!” She ordered. “Or I’ll… I’ll… I’ll kill you!”

* * *

“You’re going to kill me!” Akasaka wheezed as he reached the top of yet another flight of stairs after what seemed like a year. “Why couldn’t we have taken the elevator!?”

“Come on, grandpa, we’re nearly there,” Fallon said at the top of the next flight, looking as if he hadn’t even broken a sweat. A floor above him, Dorothea was peeking out of the window on the door out of the stairwell.

She called down, “Looks like we’re late to the party. I can hear gunfire. Woah!”

“What is it?” Fallon asked, still waiting for Akasaka to catch up.

“I just saw Miss Naoe--someone was chasing her!”

“You should go help!” Fallon suggested. “We’ll be right behind you!”

* * *

The men in the meeting room jumped as the sound of gunfire started nearby.

“You needn’t be afraid,” Kershner continued calmly. “Not yet. If you’ll direct your attention to these glasses, please.” He gestured. “You’re some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Japan. I am presenting you with the opportunity of a lifetime. Well, some of you, at any rate.”

“I refuse,” Nakamura said immediately. “I won’t stand and listen to your madness any longer!” He started for the door but Agatha stood in his way. “Move!”

Agatha smiled. Her teeth were long, too long, and needle sharp. She grabbed his arms in a vice-like grip and bit into his throat as quick as a striking cobra. His hot blood sprayed her face and the wall behind her.

The other men in the room cried out. Agatha circled slowly around the table toward them. Kato tried to run around the other side but she reached one hand out. An impossibly long claw extended from the end of her index finger and pierced his neck. He collapsed to the floor beside Nakamura and drowned slowly in his own blood.

“Now Agatha,” Kershner reprimanded her gently. “You’re not giving these gentlemen a sporting chance.” He addressed the board members again. “In case you haven’t realized, the two of us are not humans. Ordinary weapons will not harm us, and we are effectively immortal. In exchange for all of your help in bringing the Signal Banks to life, I am offering you a taste of immortality.”

He picked up a glass and raised it toward the Baron. “How about you, Genzo? After all, none of this would have been possible without the invaluable contributions of the NTC. And if you choose to join us, I am sure we can make arrangements for your sweet daughter as well.”

“You stay away from Ryoko!” The Baron roared. “We won’t have anything to do with you monsters any longer!”

Kershner shrugged. “I’m sorry to hear that. Any other takers?” He looked to the other board members. One of them lurched forward trembling with a hand outstretched. 

“I’ll do it. If you can promise that my family will be safe.”

Kershner placed the glass in his hand. “Of course, Akagi. I may be dead, but I’m not heartless. Bottoms up.”

* * *

“You think you can kill me with that dull old blade?” Mikhail asked dryly. He had stopped a short distance from Ryoko but still pointed his gun at her. 

“I know I can!” Ryoko lied. “Unless you put that thing down! I thought we had an understanding!”

“Because you gave me this?” Mikhail pulled the velvet box with the black pearl out of his pocket. “You’re a fool. I’ve killed everyone else who knows the truth about the Ark, why should I start making exceptions now?”

A gun went off. Ryoko screamed and flinched. Hot blood sprayed across her face and wood splintered as a bullet tore through Mikhail’s abdomen from behind and into her father’s solid wood desk. Wide-eyed with surprise, the vampire fell to his knees and dropped the velvet box. Dorothea stood in the office doorway and lowered her weapon. “Miss Naoe! Are you hurt?”

Relieved, Ryoko gingerly moved around Mikhail’s body to stand by Dorothea. “I’m okay,” she answered shakily. 

“Who is that?” Dorothea asked. Cautiously she stepped closer to Mikhail to pick up the velvet box.

Ryoko hesitated. “He’s Yuliy’s brother. He’s been looking for the Ark, too.”

“His brother?” Dorothea repeated, astonished. “But he’s a vampire.”

Suddenly, Mikhail flipped over and kicked Dorothea’s legs out from underneath her. She yelped and tried to roll away, but he leapt on top of her back and wrestled her rifle out of her hands. He sat up and fired at Ryoko; the shot went wide. She fled the room still clutching her family’s sword. In the hall was a giant red haired Westerner and a much smaller Japanese man but she ran by them without stopping. 

Ryoko could no longer hear the sounds of fighting on the rest of the floor, and she hoped that meant Yuliy and the Professor had defeated their enemies. She found the hall of conference rooms and ran along the glass wall until she found one with its vertical blinds drawn. She could see figures through the gaps in the coverings; several men were standing fearfully against the window, but one was standing at the table drinking from a small cup. She couldn’t hear anything, but she watched him begin to cough and shake. 

Her father stepped toward the man, who swung his arms to push him away. His body jerked violently and Ryoko recognized the process of transformation that would turn a mild-mannered millionaire into a feral beast. 

“Dad!” She screamed and pounded furiously on the glass. “Dad, you have to get out of there!”

Inside the room, Kershner and Agatha turned to see who was knocking in the hallway. As Kato’s bones cracked and his skin tore open to make room for new muscles, Kershner advised, “Best to make your decisions now, my friends. He won’t have the mind to be merciful once he’s finished.”

“Ryoko!” Genzo made for the door, but Agatha leapt in front of him with her claws and fangs bared. 

“You’re not excused until you’ve finished what’s in front of you,” Kershner chided. The thrall that used to be Kato straightened and lunged at the other board members. His claws tore into one man’s belly and spilled his guts onto the floor. Then the thrall leapt on top of him and began to eat him alive. More scared of being devoured than they were of Agatha, the remaining members pushed past her to escape through the door. Only the Baron was still trapped inside.

Ryoko ran in and swung her katana at Agatha. Nimbly, the female vampire jumped aside and over the table. She hissed and raised her claws in a challenge.

Knowing that she stood a better chance outrunning Agatha than fighting her, Ryoko pushed her father toward the door. “Dad, run! I’m right behind you!”

* * *

When the last thrall crumbled to dust, Yuliy ran after the sound of Ryoko’s voice. Before he reached the conference rooms, however, he found another room with its glass walls shot out. Fallon and Akasaka stood outside, pointing their guns at two figures caught up in hand-to-hand combat inside. He saw that one of them was Dorothea--and the other was Mikhail.

Yuliy shouted his brother’s name, which distracted him enough to allow Dorothea to deal a powerful blow to the side of his head. Mikhail stumbled to the side and smashed into the glass table between two couches. With a feral snarl, he leapt up again and slashed at her with two large shards clutched in his fists like knives. Dorothea jerked back and lost her balance, falling to the floor. Before Mikhail could dive on top of her, Yuliy jumped between them.

“Are you ready to make good on your promise to kill me, little brother?” Mikhail asked. 

“No!” Yuliy shouted. “I’m going to save you!”

“You’re such a fool!” Mikhail howled and prepared to leap at him. Then Fallon loosed a barrage of bullets in a line on the floor and window that forced Mikhail to take several steps back. The glass cracked. In the distance, a girl screamed.

“Go help Ryoko!” Dorothea shouted at Fallon and Akasaka from her position on the floor. “We can handle this!”

Fallon paused, then nodded and turned to run down the hall. Akasaka followed him. 

Slowly Dorothea stood. “Even though he’s a vampire, you still want to use the Ark to cure him?” She put a hand on his shoulder. “I think that’s really touching, kid.”

As quick as a flash, she drew her handgun from its side holster and shot Mikhail through the right side of his chest. Then she swept Yuliy’s leg out from under him and flipped him over her shoulder. Before he realized what was happening, she sent his body through the window and he began to fall.

* * *

Agatha’s claws tore up the floor and the walls as she chased Ryoko and the Baron toward the elevator. They passed the surviving board members who cowered together behind overturned desks and scrambled over each other to try and get away.

“Get down, Miss Naoe!” Boomed an unfamiliar voice. Ahead Ryoko could see the giant Westerner and his smaller friend taking aim with their weapons. She seized the front of her father’s shirt and pulled him down with her to the floor. 

Agatha screamed as the stranger’s sniper rifle tore through her left leg, blowing it off at the knee, and then through her right arm until it hung only by a thread. She writhed on the floor just behind Ryoko and the Baron, who quickly stood up and ran behind their unexpected rescuers. 

Though those injuries would have meant certain death to a human being, Agatha was much hardier. A sinister purple-red glow enveloped her body and she rose up like a marionette to fly at Fallon. Then Akasaka leapt in front to begin blasting away with his shotgun. The noise was terrible, but he did not let up until he’d reduced the royal vampire to an ashen pulp.

* * *

Yuliy didn’t realize he had blacked out when Dorothea had thrown him through the window, but he came around after feeling something hot dripping on his face from above. He could smell that it was blood.

He opened his eyes and looked up. Mikhail hung halfway out of the building, his left hand wrapped tightly around Yuliy’s wrist to stop him from plummeting to a messy end. It was his older brother’s blood dripping from the bullet wound on his right shoulder that had woken him. 

“Let’s go, Yuliy,” Mikhail grunted with effort. “We haven’t got all day.”

He pulled his younger brother halfway up, and Yuliy was able to leverage himself back into the building. He cut his hands on the broken glass and lay still for a moment, trying to process Dorothea’s betrayal and his brother’s apparent change of heart. Then the ear-splitting approach of a helicopter caught their attention, and they watched it disappear from view to begin landing on the roof of the City Center.

Mikhail did not have any time to waste. He stood uneasily and started to leave the room.

“Mikhail, wait!” Yuliy called after him. “You’re hurt!”

“That bitch has the mark!” Mikhail spat. He held a hand over the hole in his stomach as he entered the hallway.

“The mark? What mark?” Yuliy asked, catching up with him.

“The mark of the Kings,” Mikhail replied. He coughed and blood dribbled out from between his lips. “I can’t… We can’t let her get away.”

* * *

Genzo hunched over, clutched his chest and fought to catch his breath. Ryoko hovered over him anxiously. “Dad, let’s get you out of here,” she said. 

“No! We can’t go outside!” The Baron protested. “Kershner… He’s done something to the Signal Banks. They’re driving people mad!”

He led them back to the conference room. Kershner was gone, but they could still see the disaster he had initiated unfolding on the street far below. 

“Sound waves?” Fallon repeated after Genzo had explained. He put a finger to his earpiece and asked Philip, “Did you hear all of that?”

“Yeah,” Philip answered. “There’s been some chatter from the police and the SDF about it. No one can figure out what’s going on.”

“Try to get the word out,” Fallon told him. “I’ll see what I can do from here. Sir, please forgive me.” He waved everyone back and then used his submachine gun to blast a hole through the window. Then he shouldered his sniper rifle and searched through the scope for the Signal Banks. When he spotted one, he fired. Ryoko saw the spray of sparks. 

“Fallon!” Yuliy shouted from the door behind them. They turned to see him supporting Mikhail, who was bleeding heavily. “Where’s the Professor!?”

“What? I thought he was with you!” Fallon was puzzled by Mikhail’s presence but did not have time to ask for an explanation.

“Dorothea’s betrayed us,” Yuliy told him. “We need to find her.”

Philip said in Fallon’s ear, “ _ The Professor’s heading for the roof. There’s a bird up there waiting, I think it’s Kershner’s escape! _ ”

“And Dorothea?”

“ _ I can’t see her anywhere, and she’s not answering on comms. _ ”

“To the roof it is,” Fallon said. He offered Akasaka his sniper rifle. “Think you could do me a favor and destroy a few more of those boxes?”

“Doesn't sound as fun as shooting down helicopters, but I’ll give it a try,” Akasaka accepted the gun and got to work.

* * *

Willard could hear the helicopter approaching as he reached the last flight of stairs. As he ran out onto the roof of the Shiodome City Center, the wind of its blades buffeted his face and whipped his clothes. In front of him, Kershner’s unmistakable silhouette stood and waited patiently for the helicopter to land. To the Professor’s utter disbelief, Dorothea stood beside him. 

Willard called out to her. Without hesitating, Dorothea turned and fired her handgun. She struck him in the leg, but he was able to dive behind an industrial air conditioner to avoid another shot at his head.

“Dorothea!” He called again, clutching his thigh. “What’s the meaning of this!?”

“Ah, Willard, so glad to see that you could make it to the demonstration,” Kershner shouted. “It’s too bad that your Jaegers interfered. I hope you know that means you’re fired.” Behind him, the helicopter landed but did not turn off its engine. Kershner continued, “But don’t worry, I’ve already found an excellent replacement.”

He started toward the helicopter. Dorothea walked backwards after him with her gun still trained on the Professor. Willard dared to peer over the top of the air conditioner and ask her, “What did he promise you, Dorothea? Money? Power? Your family?”

He flinched as she fired off another shot, but did not stop. “He can’t bring them back to you! Not even Kershner has the power to reverse what Yevgraf has done! Come back, Dorothea--the Jaegers are your family now!”

“What do you know about family!?” Dorothea screamed. “You used lies to keep us together, to keep us depending on you!” She fired again, but the wind from the helicopter affected her aim and the shot went over the Professor’s head. “Not anymore, Willard!”

Willard realized that Dorothea was not going to listen to him, and that it was his own fault that things had gotten this far. “I’m sorry,” he said to himself, then took a firing position. He shot at Kershner, who hurried to the helicopter and climbed inside. 

* * *

“Dad, stay here,” Ryoko said, ignoring his protests and following the Jaegers out. She left her sword on the conference room table, then went to Mikhail’s other side to put his arm across her shoulders and help him stand. As they hurried toward a stairwell she asked Yuliy, “Dorothea betrayed you? Are you sure it wasn’t some kind of misunderstanding?”

“She took the mark of Kings and threw my brother out of a window,” Mikhail replied dryly. “It seemed pretty deliberate to me.”

“Threw you out of a window!?” Ryoko gasped. 

Yuliy said nothing, but the angry expression on his face discouraged Ryoko from pressing the matter further. Instead she told them, “I don’t think we’ll be able to make it up the stairs like this.” At least she knew that she couldn’t. “How about we take the elevator?”

It was the most awkward elevator ride of her life, taken in complete silence with two Jaegers and a vampire. Philip was able to fill them in on what he had overheard through the Professor’s earpiece. When they reached the floor before the roof, Fallon ran ahead to join their leader in his firefight against Dorothea. Yuliy and Ryoko helped Mikhail, who seemed to grow angrier as his body became weaker. 

When they finally reached the rooftop, they found Fallon and the Professor taking cover behind an air conditioner as Dorothea fired at them from the door of a helicopter preparing to take off. With a roar, Mikhail pushed his supports off of him and ran headlong at Dorothea. 

She shot at him, striking his abdomen again. Mikhail fell and rolled, leaving a gruesome streak of blood across the rooftop. Yuliy cried out and sprinted toward the helicopter, but it lifted off of the roof as Dorothea continued to fire on the Jaegers. The copter had to maneuver quickly to avoid both police and news aircraft that had also begun to circle the building. 

Yuliy let out a wordless scream, then fell to his knees beside Mikhail. His brother whispered hoarsely, “Yuliy, I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you.”

“Save me?” Yuliy asked, confused and frightened. He knew, they all knew, that Mikhail was going to die. “What do you mean...?”

“Promise me,” Mikhail said with the last of his strength. “Promise me that you won’t use the Ark.”

Yuliy opened and closed his mouth, but did not say what he felt: with Mikhail gone, he no longer had a reason to seek out that cursed artifact. He could only manage a choked, “I promise.”

“Good boy,” Mikhail sighed. His lifeless grey eyes closed, and like every other vampire, his body turned to ash. Howling with grief, Yuliy tried to keep the dust from blowing away in the wind but it was no use.

Standing at a distance, Ryoko and the Jaegers looked on sadly. Fallon had tied off the Professor’s leg with a torn-off shirt sleeve to slow the bleeding, and now he picked the other man off of the ground. “We have to get going,” he shouted toward Yuliy once he had fallen silent. “Are you coming?”

Yuliy did not say anything, but he stood up and trailed behind Fallon toward the stairs. He did not look at Ryoko as he walked by. She knew without being told that wherever they went now, she would not be able to follow.


	8. Epilogue

20 December, 10:00 am

Several months had passed since Ryoko had seen the Yuliy and the Jaegers, but she thought of them every day. She had been very busy, working alongside her father to restore the NTC’s relationships and reputation following the Hyakko Party Incident. They were among the few that knew the truth of what had occurred, but the public had been led to believe that terrorists had sabotaged the Signal Banks to lead the attack on the City Center. High-ranking government officials had moved quickly to silence witnesses and eliminate evidence to the contrary; Ryoko still wasn’t sure if that was because they worked for the vampires or for the Jaeger’s enigmatic Organization.

She read the news every day, looking for some sign that they were still out there fighting the Enemy, but heard nothing. Ryoko supposed that was how it should be. She also looked for Dorothea on international criminal lists and was surprised when her search came up empty. 

Her father still struggled with his health and had sworn to her that he would officially retire at the new year. He was looking forward to spending more time with her, even though she had devoted herself to leading the charitable arm of the NTC. They were preparing to go on vacation in a few days, and Ryoko hoped that she would really be able to clear her head and enjoy herself.

She stood in front of the butsudan preparing to light incense when Tomoko came to the door. “Excuse me, Miss Naoe,” she said with a slight bow. “You have a visitor.”

Ryoko hadn’t been expecting anyone. “Please, show them in,” she began. A man was standing behind Tomoko that she did not recognize.

He wore a wool coat open over his dark suit and a handsome but hard to read face. When he entered the room he said, “Forgive the intrusion, Miss. My name is Hideomi Iba. I work for Kyodo News.”

Ryoko frowned and put out the match she was going to use for the incense. “We don’t allow the media in our home,” she said pointedly, wondering why Tomoko had let him in. “If you’re looking for my father, you’ll need to make an appointment with his assistant.”

“You misunderstand me,” the man replied, unbothered. “I wish to speak with you, not the Baron, regarding the events of last August.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph. “Would you please tell me, do you recognize this creature?”

Ryoko accepted the photograph and felt the bottom of her stomach drop out.

It was a poor quality picture of what appeared at first glance to be a naked, blood-drained corpse lying in an alleyway riddled with bulletholes. Then she saw the metal mask over the face, the straps of leather over the torso, and the distinct discoloration of the limbs. It was one of the living corpses she had seen in the basement of the Shiodome City Center.

“Tomoko, could you please make Mr Iba and I some tea?” She asked. The housekeeper left and Ryoko handed the photo back. “What is that thing supposed to be?”

“I think you already know,” Iba said, the faintest smile on his lips. “It was responsible for several violent murders just outside of the city, and it took quite a lot to bring it down. The body has been destroyed by the police by now, but not before an inside source took this photo. They also noted that there were a number of electronic implants in the body--manufactured by Alma Electronics.”

Ryoko was unable to hide her distress. “That’s horrible,” she told him. “I’m glad to hear that the police were able to stop it…”

“They were able to stop one,” Iba said. “But you and I both know that out there, somewhere, there must be more.” 

Ryoko had a sneaking suspicion that this man was much more than just a journalist. “And if there are, I’m sure that the police and the military will be able to find them and destroy them.”

Iba smirked. “It’s a noble thought, but I wouldn’t count on that. Instead, I was hoping that you could lead me to some people who are much better equipped for this sort of challenge.”

Ryoko swallowed hard. She knew what he was about to ask her before he even said it.

“I want you to help me find the Jaegers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I had a lot of fun with this fic. I have an idea for another (unrelated to this story) but work/life has been a little nuts lately and I'm not sure if I'll have the time. I appreciate the kind words and kudos from people who have read this, though. Stay safe out there!


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